


as you're told

by lilyjpotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ella Enchanted Fusion, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ella Enchanted, F/M, Gen, Modern Marauders (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-08-10 07:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20131870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilyjpotter/pseuds/lilyjpotter
Summary: me? doing another movie au in order to avoid writing original content? its more likely than you think





	1. Chapter 1

_Intro_

She’s a bad fairy, the thing is. Lucinda gives her the gift and it’s shocking and everyone knows it is, like how last week she gave a child down the road the ability to lighting fires just because. Half the house was gone within a week.

Tonks has a fit on her behalf.

“It’s stinking rotten!” she curses out Lucinda, bellowing rage and glaring, pink hair sticking up in all directions. “It’s a bloody awful thing to have to do what you’re told! Take it back!”

“I have a no–returns policy,” Lucinda points out. She’s holding Lily with one hand and fingering a brown curl with the other, smiling in a way that is thin-lipped and baleful. “If you’re going to be ungrateful, I could always turn her into a squirrel, instead.”

Her Mum steps in. “No,” she says, “obedience is a lovely gift.”

“Rubbish,” Tonks mutters.

“Besides,” Lucinda says, cooing at Lily, “you should thank me.”

“Fat chance of that,” Tonks tells her.

“I’ve just given you,” Lucinda tells them, ignoring Tonks, holding Lily aloft, gazing at her, “the perfect child.”

Lily, giggling, pisses all over her. Tonks laughs so hard she falls backward into the cot.

* * *

It doesn’t stop her, though—nothing ever really does. She barely knows she has it, the curse, does things for people without them asking, most of time. Her Mum doesn’t tell her that she has it and Tonks isn’t allowed to and her Dad doesn’t even know.

She meets Mary without meaning to; she draws well in free–time and Lily has always thought so, is ready to tell her when she catches Bellatrix Lestrange, her lot of black hair and mean face, picking on her in the yard.

“Why don’t you go back to where you came from?” she’s asking. Mary’s trying to ignore her until Bellatrix shoves her.

“Nobody wants you here,” she snarls, standing over her.

Lily comes up, gets in Bellatrix’s face. “I do.”

“Bite me,” Bellatrix pouts, and Lily does, hard.

* * *

She finds out at her birthday party, when Tonks speaks out of turn, once, and never again. Once is all it takes.

“Stuff your face,” she tells Lily, sitting in front of her birthday cake, and Lily, without really knowing why, shovels enough cake into her mouth to make herself gag.

Everyone thinks it’s hilarious, though, until Lily starts crying, but by that time her Mum has told her to stop, and Tonks is holding a fistful of forks, ashen-faced by the kitchen door.

Later, after everyone’s gone home, she’s sitting on the couch. Her Mum’s taking a flannel to her face and Tonks is chewing her nails.

“I sort of knew something was the matter with me,” Lily says, out of turn.

“No,” Tonks snaps at her, “_ nothing’s _ the matter with you. If I hadn’t—”

“You could take it back, couldn’t you?” Lily asks her, earnestly, and the smile Tonks gives her is so, so sad, it makes her sad, too.

“Doesn’t work that way, sweetheart.”

“Besides,” her Mum says, pinching Lily’s nose with the cloth, “Lucinda threatened to turn you into a squirrel if we ever asked her again.”

“I could try,” Lily says, looking at her hands.

No-one says anything to this, and they sit there, Tonks in a state of despair, Lily’s Mum holding the wet flannel, and Lily, thinking about how to fix things. How to make herself better.

“S’not fair,” she says, sniffing, dragging a hand across her nose.

“I know,” Tonks tells her, coming over, finally, her and Lily’s Mum gathering her up into their arms, stroking her hair, a three-way hug. “It’s not fair at all.”

* * *

She gets good at finding ways around things. The best way to not have to do something, she finds, is to not hear the command, which is why she spends so much time out of the house, in a tree, upside down from a branch, or somewhere in the woods. Her Mum, or Tonks, or Dad has to scream if they want her.

Sometimes she wishes the gift worked in reverse. She wishes that hard, wishes she could stop her mother from dying. It doesn’t work.

Tonks and her Dad pull her into the dark room, windows open, curtains billowing because her Mum has had a fever for her whole life, it seems, sweating and crying onto the lacy pillows.

Even as she lies there, dying, her Dad out of the room, she tells Lily not to tell anyone, ever, no matter what. It locks her in, she’s got no choice. Now it’s only her, Tonks and the dying Mother.

“I don’t want anyone using it against you,” her Mum tells her, hand against Lily’s cheek, whose knees feel rashy as they dig into the carpet.

_ What would people do if they knew? _ Lily thinks, kneeling there. _ Could she stop them, some way? _

She thinks about turning to Tonks, asking her to tell her to stop her Mum from dying, because then she’d have to find a way, there’d have to be one, she wouldn’t be able to stop until she found one.

“You’re stronger than it,” her Mum says, “it’s just a spell.”

Lily nods. Her Mum is a smart woman, she knows this. Maybe that’s why she’s dying. Can you die from being too right?

Mums are supposed to die when you’re good and old and ready, when you’ve got kids of your own to look at you and be shocked by their Mum crying, the wrongness of it. Instead her Mum dies before any of this can happen and she can’t stop it.

_Part 1 _

_ (10 years later)_

“Kiddo.” Tonks opens the door without knocking, she doesn’t mind. “Your father wants you.”

“One sec,” she says, finishing the laces on her boots. This is something she likes about Tonks; she never asks her to do anything. It’s like second nature; whenever someone tells Tonks to do something she grumbles and huffs about, scowling.

She would never tell her to do anything; hasn’t since the cake incident. She wonders if her Mum made her promise. Promises, she’s found, don’t work with people the same way they do with her.

* * *

She gets downstairs.

“You’re married,” she says. It’s a flatline, it’s not a question. Her father’s just told her this, she doesn’t know why she’s repeating it. Maybe because it sounds stupid. Maybe because she wants it to be happening to someone else.

“She has money, love,” her Dad tells her. “It was either get married, or sell the house. You’ll love the Dame, and her daughter. She’ll make a wonderful mother.”

She looks at him, hard.

“A mother-like figure,” he amends.

He’s saying a lot of words and she wants to believe him. She wants to believe him anything. She wants a lot of things. She wants to not stick her head in a water trough because someone tells her to, which she has done. She wants her mother to not be dead so she doesn’t have to get a new one.

* * *

She comes out smiling with Tonks, it’s all she can do. These people have done nothing to her, she doesn’t want to make them think they have.

“This must be Lily.” It’s a woman with a snippy voice and a strange face, ignoring Tonks completely, which makes Lily bristle.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Lily tells her instead.

“Yes,” the woman says. It’s odd. “The house,” she starts, turning back to look at her father, “looks delightful.”

There’s a girl behind the woman, kind of sour-faced. Lily tries to be warm, squeezes Tonks’s arm before going to greet her.

“Hello,” she says, “I’m Lily. Welcome to Frell.”

“Petunia,” the girl sniffs.

_ Right _ , Lily thinks, turning back to look at Tonks, who shrugs. _ Right. _

* * *

There are a bunch of posters in the room joining hers’, suddenly, a likeness of the Prince. She’s not sure why they’re there.

“So… “ Lily starts, “You like the Prince, then?”

“I’m a part of his fanclub,” Petunia says. Lily’s not sure if she’s joking. “He’s so… normal.”

“Sure,” Lily says, “sure, but… you do know that he and his uncle are responsible for the segregation of the kingdom?”

“I know,” Petunia says, like it’s a good thing. “Do you have any more closet space?” she wants to know, suddenly.

“Oh, do you need a bit more room?”

“Yes,” Petunia says.

“I’ll show you,” Lily adds, takes her to her room.

“It’s so quaint,” Petunia tells her. Lily notices she has a habit of talking about bad things like they are good, good like they are bad.

“Thank you,” Lily tells her. Petunia cuts her a look, like she’s angry that she’s being so polite.

Lily starts clearing out a drawer. Petunia comes over, sniffs, and says, “I’ll need more room than that.”

“Alright, sure,” Lily says, “here,” and opens the door to her closet.

Petunia gives cursory glances, shoves aside a bunch of skirts. A few of Lily’s favourites tumble off their hangers, and she starts forward, with an, “Excuse me,” before Petunia whirls and tells her to move back.

It’s the first time she’s told her to do something and it’s very unpleasant, but Lily immediately catches it—she hasn’t said how far, for how long, where she has to stand, just that she has to move back, and so she does.

“What’s that?” Petunia asks, pointing to a necklace on Lily’s dresser.

It’s just a necklace, really—her Mum gave it to her.

“My mother’s necklace,” Lily tells her.

“It’s pretty,” Petunia says. She moves forward to grab it.

“Oi,” Lily says, stopping her.

“It can be your welcome gift to me,” Petunia says, holding it up.

“I rather think the extra closet space covers it,” Lily tells her. “Give that back, please.”

“Excuse me?”

“Give it back.”

Petunia purses her lips, like she’s caught onto something nasty, says, “It’s not nice to snatch.”

Lily, squaring up, tells her, “Neither is taking someone’s possessions without asking.”

“Fine,” Petunia says, putting it down on the dresser, “Keep it. It’s ugly anyway,” she tells her, and walks out.

* * *

Her Dad leaves. Not for long and not far away but he leaves, and she doesn’t want him to.

He sells watches and it’s a stupid job but he’s nice, he’s so nice and he’s only doing it for her, really, but still, she doesn’t want him to go. She doesn’t know what will happen if he does.

She hugs him goodbye before he heads out the door of the cottage.

“I’ll miss you,” she says, “and I love you, and come back soon.”

He pats her on the head, like she’s five. She wants to be. “I’ll miss you and love you too, and I will.”

She can hear Petunia and the Dame laughing upstairs and it’s hollow. This house will be hollow, she realises, without her Father and two extra empty people inside it.

She stays up with Tonks most of the night, the two of them eventually sleeping in her room together, curling up on the bed like cats.

* * *

The next day, at school, they’re in the middle of a structured debate.

“Elves, giants, ogres and humans used to exist in harmony,” Lily says, on the podium, long skirt swishing around her ankles as she walks. Petunia, next to her, scowls. “Until King Fleamont was killed—allegedly—by an ogre, which Ser Tom saw as an opportunity to exile all non-human creatures to the forest. He kept their land for himself.”

Mary, grinning, winks at her from her desk in the back, chin in the cup of her palm. Lily moves to the side, Petunia stepping up instead.

“What my opponent fails to communicate,” she starts, “is that Ser Tom has done a _ brilliant _ job.”

Lily actually laughs, she can’t help it. Petunia glares at her.

“He’s driven the ogres out, and given giants and elves work as labourers and entertainers. If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have today’s thriving economy and free enterprise system."

There are sounds of assent and dissent and Mary goes red, boots slipping off the desk in front of her.

Lily, turning to Petunia, snaps, “It’s only _ thriving _ and _ free _ because they’re _ enslaved _. If that’s the way Ser Tom sees fit to run a country, I don’t hold out much hope for his nephew, either.”

Petunia turns to her. “That shows how much you know. James Potter will be the greatest king ever.”

Lily hears people agree with Petunia. Her ears get hot, which is what happens when she’s furious. She can’t help that the next thing she says is, “I wonder if you’ve based your opinion on the Prince’s politics or how fuckable you think he is.”

Mary falls out of her desk. Their professor is about to call Lily off—and rightly so, she can barely believe what she’s just said, when Petunia hisses to her:

“Just _ admit _ that you’re biased and uneducated and that you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She chokes. She doesn’t have to say it now. She can say it later, as quietly as she wants.

“If neither of you are going to obey debating protocol,” their professor is saying, “then I’ll have to call it a draw.” She dismisses them.

She’s lying in bed that night when she whispers to herself, quietly, “I’m biased and uneducated and I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

In the next room, lying awake, Petunia hears her.

* * *

He’s got his legs up on the bench, as per, one arm stretched languidly behind his head. He’s a body of water. He’s bored.

“Uncle,” he says, and Tom looks at him, cheeks and dark eyes, “do I really have to go this mall opening?”

Tom’s lips draw back—it’s not really a smile—and sighs. Nagini’s curled around his staff. He hates that bloody snake.

“As heir to the throne,” Tom starts, “it’s your royal obligation, James. You are a public figure, after all.”

“Yeah,” James grins, swinging his legs down, sitting up, “but you’re the one in charge.”

“Only for a little while longer,” his uncle tells him. “Your coronation is next week.” He doesn’t need to be reminded. King. He’s going to be a fucking king and it’s wack.

“You need,” Tom continues, “to be out there with the people, James. Shaking hands, kissing babies, so the people can learn to trust us.”

“What’s not to trust?” James laughs.

“Nothing,” Tom tells him. “But, while you have been away at school, the ogres have become impossible, and the giants have become more and more treacherous.”

“Giants’ve always been peaceful,” James says, doubtful.

“The ogres were peaceful, too,” Tom says, sitting back, face drawn. “Before they ripped your father to shreds.” James’s breath sticks in his throat, a bit like blood.

“And I promised your father,” Tom tells him, sitting forward now, “should anything happen to him, that I would take care of you and the kingdom. And I’ve kept my promise, as should you, to your people.”

James nods. He knows, he knows, he knows.

“Now, let’s put on a smile,” Tom says, and James chuckles into his thumb, wiping the corner of his mouth, “and remember,” Tom says, like a touch, “image is everything.”

* * *

There’s a lot of screaming before Ser Tom gets up on the podium, girls here to see the Prince. Petunia’s there, friends of hers too.

Tom tells them it’s wonderful to be here, a charming town—he’s slimy, Lily thinks, would make an awful king, doesn’t know if his nephew will be much better.

The second he mentions Prince James everyone goes beserk, a collective scream. Lily rolls her eyes, Mary’s cheek on her shoulder.

“And now,” Tom says, those unearthly eyes, the stillness of it unnerving, barely smiling but barely not; Lily hates him, she decides, “it is my great pleasure to welcome my nephew, Prince James.”

It’s like a riot, a bombing, like someone’s dead or is dying. A girl faints. James comes out, and Lily doesn’t see the appeal. He’s tall but annoying and gloating and tall. She glares.

“He’s hot,” Mary remarks.

“He’s not,” Lily says, brandishing her banner, standing up on the lip of a statue in the back of the crowd, and she starts to scream, too, but differently.

“Say no to ogrecide!” she yells, Mary hopping up beside her, hoisting her own banner up.

“Stop the giant land grab!” Mary screams. This goes on, both girls hollering at him. They figure he’s the only they can get through to. They think it’d be lost on Tom.

From near the front, Petunia whirls.

She marches up to her, rips the banner from her hands. “_ Lily _ ,” she hisses. “What are you _ doing _?”

“What?” Lily asks.

“You’re embarrassing me,” Petunia tells her.

“How could anyone possibly know I’m with you?” Lily demands. “What does my protesting real issues that affect people outside of this mall have to do with you?”

Petunia doesn’t niggle. “Go home,” she tells Lily. “_ Now _,” she adds, when Lily doesn’t budge.

_ She knows _, is Lily’s first thought, but that’s stupid, how could she know?

In any case, she has to go, legs already moving, hopping off the edge of the statue.

“Lil,” Mary intones, and Lily looks at her, apologetic, and tells her, “Sorry.”

She’s not there to witness a torrent of girls storm the platform, get past the guards and almost flatten James, whose Uncle grabs him roughly by his shoulder and tells him to run, get back to the carriage.

* * *

He doesn’t go to the carriage. Not really. Not at all.

He goes way past that.

He takes the road out of town, crashes down the path and right into her, and she doesn’t really know what’s happening.

She’s there, she’s walking, and it’s bizarre. He barrels into her, she screams, he drags her down behind a stone wall, and she thinks, _ am I being hurt? Is this not supposed to happen? _ Because there’s a tall man, hand wrapped around her mouth and another hand around her waist and she’s on his lap and he’s _ warm _, and he holds her there, tight against his chest, and she sees the girls run past, and once they’re out of earshot, she punches him in the crotch, hard.

“_ What the _ fuck _ was that for _?” he screeches, on the ground, in pain.

“You grabbed me,” she says, stumbling to her feet. She wipes her mouth, like she can still feel his hand there, his hands everywhere.

And then she gets a good look and him, and she thinks, _ I just punched the Prince in the dick _ . _ Oh my God, I just punched the Prince in the dick. _

“Your Highness,” she tries.

“Please,” he says, recovering, _ laughing, _ standing up and _ up _, “call me—“ he looks at her, and it scares her in a way that him grabbing her didn’t, “Call me James.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry about that,” he says, all charm, leaning on the stone wall, “occupational hazard.”

She rolls her eyes, scowls.

“Please,” he starts forward, “allow me—“

“I don’t need your chivalry, thanks,” she says, backing away from him. “And I have absolutely no intention of curtseying, either, so you can forget that.”

And then she starts off down the road.

She expects him to leave her alone, really doesn’t expect him to follow her, but then she can hear him, footsteps, tall enough to block out the bloody sun.

“You can curtsey or not,” he says, dipping to grin at her, and she scowls, “it’s your choice. There’s not much I can do about it.”

She starts to walk faster.

“Of course,” he says, casually, “I could have you beheaded, but that seems a tad extreme.”

“Listen, Your _ Highness _,” she says, not stopping, can’t stop, if she does he’s won, “why don’t you do what your people usually do: steal my land and destroy my livelihood.” She hears him stop walking, takes that as a good sign. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—“

“Wait a second,” he growls, all of a sudden something’s come and gone like the sun behind a cloud, and he’s telling her, clearly, to stop, and she does, because she has to, but she thinks that even if she didn’t, his voice would stop her.

She waits for a second, then goes.

“Oi!” he yells at her. She tries to ignore him. She’s never wanted to walk away from anyone as much as she wants to walk away from him in this moment. She’d waste so much on this moment.

“Come back here,” he tells her, angrily. She does as she’s told. The thought rises then, unbidden; _ he’ll make a good king. That’s a good voice. _ As soon as it’s there, she’s furious with herself. _ Go away, _ she thinks.

She marches up to him and plants herself there, glaring. “_ What _?” she snaps.

He softens, then, seems to like looking at her face, he seems impressed and this annoys her. _ Stop looking at me _, she wants to say.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

It’s too perfunctory. She was expecting reprimands, demandings, something else. Not this. Not politeness.

It seems harmless, to tell him. “Lily.”

“Of?” he prompts.

“Frell.”

“Well, Lily,” he says, leaning on one leg, she doesn’t like this leaning business, kings are meant to stand up straight. “You’re the first girl I’ve ever met that hasn’t swooned at the sight of me.”

She laughs, coming out of her in a burst; the absolute _ absurdity _ of him, she can’t believe it. His cheeks go pink. “I reckon, then,” she says, “that I’ve done you some good.”

And then she walks away.

But he comes after her. Of course he does. That’s more in line with her idea of him, wheedling, childish.

“Look, I’ve never stolen anyone’s land or livelihood,” he insists, has to let her know this one thing, apparently. She groans, turns to him. _ God, he got here quickly _. He’s already next to her.

“I want peace in the kingdom as much as anyone,” he continues.

“So,” she says, “does that mean you have no plan once you take the crown?”

This seems to baffle him, like he hasn’t thought that far.

“Um,” he says. _ God _, she thinks. “Well—of course, but obviously I couldn’t reveal it to a subject.”

_ Subject _. That makes her laugh again. He’s insufferable. “That’s what I thought, you’re all the bloody same. You care more about your fanclub and your next jousting tournament.”

“Well, I—I mean, they’re alright, but your disdain for me’s a bit more refreshing.”

“Obvious?” she says, a bit cute and coy, the way he’d probably like her. “I was trying _ so _ hard to hide it.”

She walks off again, unencumbered, if he tells her to do anything else she will _ hit _ him, she doesn’t care that he’s a royal.

“Hang on,” she says, right there in the middle of the road. _ Purse, purse. _ “Where’s my purse?” She whirls, another thing to blame on him, another thing that’s his fault, “It’s _ back there _—“

He seems to want to make her happy, like there’s something to make up for. _ Chivalrous git, _ she thinks, _ are all princes this way? _ “Stay there until I get back,” he tells her, “I’ll get it.”

That doesn’t give her much room to work. Technically, she _ has _ to stay there, and the bit about him getting back is particularly difficult to get out of.

She tries to move, can’t. She should’ve seen this coming, should’ve run from him if that’s what it took.

The green oaks snap above her. If you cut them open, she thinks, they’d been green all the way through.

She hears the gravel up ahead crunch and thinks, _ Great, he’s back, _ but when she turns to look she doesn’t see Prince, but a carriage, coming full-tilt, in a gap between the trees.

_ Fuck _ , she thinks, _ oh, fuck _. She can’t move.

“Stop!” she yells, waves her arms. “Stop! _ Stop! _”

It’s a tight bend where she’s standing, she takes this road often enough to know. The driver won’t see her until she’s thrown under the wheels. She jumps, screaming. She doesn’t particularly want to die here.

He can’t hear her, the driver, with the hoofbeats and the wheels crunching. He can’t hear her.

Not caring how pitiful it makes her sound, how scared, she screams for the Prince.

“_ James!” _ she shrieks, loud as she can. It makes her want to die a little bit, admitting she needs him, but she doesn’t actually want to die, not here, not right now. “ _ James! Help!” _

But then he’s running, he’s running straight for her and she can see him coming, and she thinks that _ until I get back _ means here, right here, he has to be right here with her and she knows that now. He collapses into her, and then she’s on her back on the grassy knoll beside the road, pinned beneath him, and he’s saying, “Oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again into her hair, and she thinks, _ fuck, he didn’t even think, he came straight for me. _

He presses up off of her for a second, the carriage long gone now, a cloud of dust in its absence. She’s completely stunned, rattled and he can see it. He’s kind of angry, kind of shocked, too, hovering above her, looking at her and saying, “Are you mental? Why didn’t you move?”

“I—I would’ve, if—”

But that seems to be enough for him, like he wasn’t really expecting an answer, because all of a sudden he collapses back against her again, whispers, “You’re crazy.”

It’s arresting enough that she lies there for a second, pleasurably crushed under the weight of him, before she pushes him off her. _ God, he’s heavy, _ she thinks, and she gets up.

“Well,” she says, desperate for something to say, because he shifts until he’s completely on his back, lying back in the grass, chin tilted up and looking at her like they’ve just done something. 

Her insides flush like a flash rain when he does that. She can’t look at him seriously, has to glare, instead, just for something to do.

“If it weren’t for your apparent fascination with knocking me to the ground…” she starts, brushing off her skirt. Her lungs are a vacuum. “That’s the second bloody time today.”

He shifts up onto his elbows, smirking at her from the grass. “Well,” he says, grinning fully, “I’ll be a bit more careful the next time I’m saving you.”

She hates so many of the things he just said, the pick. “Next time?” she says, incredulous, pausing in her quest to vanquish her skirt of any grass fronds or dandelion seeds. “What on Earth makes you think we’re going to see each other again?”

He looks kind of hurt, as if he had this planned. “Won’t we?” he says.

“No,” she insists, bluntly. _ Does she want to see him again? _ “No,” she says again.

“Jesus, Frell,” he says, getting to his feet. _ God, he’s tall. _

She presses her hands to her face for a moment, long but not long enough. Maybe if she fell asleep right now she’d wake up somewhere nicer. She wouldn’t hear her step-sister calling her name like it’s something difficult to say.

But she does. “Lily!” Petunia calls.

She opens her eyes, and she’s exactly where she was before, on a grassy hill, in front of a tall boy.

James is frowning at her, she realises, deeply concerned. He seems to have moved closer to her, too, like he was about to reach out and touch her, if she hadn’t opened her eyes. Like he would’ve kept looking and looking at her, if she hadn’t opened her eyes.

“Come here, now,” Petunia says, not quite enough to give any sort of game away, but enough to make Lily wonder, a bit.

She turns away from James, walks over to Petunia, who gives her a cruel, shrewd look and says, “Shouldn’t you be at home cleaning the fireplace?”

She can feel him looking at her, James, like there’s something to be said for all of this, like what her step-sister has just said makes it as though she’s lied to him.

Lily smiles at Petunia, then, in a way that isn’t entirely true.

Her step-sister leans forward, and hisses, under her breath, “Stop _ flirting _ with him.”

Startlingly, for a second, she feels a tug in her lower gut, like there was something to be stopped, like there was something going on there, which there isn’t.

“Go back to the mall,” Petunia tells her. “Now.”

She tries to swallow it back, like she’s been doing all her life, trying to stop things from happening to her. But she has to. She _ has _ to, she can feel her feet moving, and she goes and hates it, hates her sister and hates James, standing behind and saying, “Lily,” as if he expects her to come back, which she won’t, not unless he asks her to.

_ Does she even want to stay? _ The thought makes her walk a little faster.

As she goes she can hear Petunia, cozying up, or making her best effort to when she’s a cold person, the coldest person Lily has ever met, in fact, talking to James about how her life used to be before she came here.

Lily crosses the river. She stood here moments ago, telling a boy off when her whole life it’s been her who’s given orders. She hears James tell her step-sister, “Tell Lily I’ll be in touch,” before he walks away.

It leaves Petunia a bit shocked, and Lily a bit glader for it, just enough for her to see a half-smile brimming on her own face in the water below. Enough to have to admit that she was smiling and stop it.

* * *

“Where were you?” Mary asks, biting into an apple.

Lily screws up her lips. She’d rather not tell unless she’s told to.

“Come on,” Mary says, and that’s enough of a command, because Lily crosses her legs at the ankles and says, “I met the Prince.”

Mary chokes on her piece of apple. “You met the _ Prince _?”

“Yes,” she says, “and I don’t want to talk about it. He was a prick and Petunia was there.”

“You’ve been running around a lot after Petunia, recently,” Mary quips.

“No, I haven’t,” Lily rebuffs.

“Yes, you have.”

“I haven’t.”

“You have.”

“I _ haven’t _.”

“God, give it up, Lily.”

“_ Fine, _” she says, “I have.”

They jump off the wall, Mary walking and eating, Lily not eating but walking, until Mary says, “Are you feeling alright?”

“How d’you mean?” Lily asks, rounding a corner and seeing Petunia browsing at a nearby gift shop, doubling back the moment she does.

“That’s what I mean,” Mary says, coming back to tug her on.

“Lily,” she hears her step-sister say. “Come here, now.” Her heart sickens.

“I’ll be right back,” she says, to Mary, it’s all she can say.

She walks up to her sister. “Yes?” she says, not liking the look on her face, the way she’s smiling.

“I need you to do something for me,” Petunia tells her. She nods, impassive, at a jar of honey. “Take that, for me. Right now.”

She feels her hand reach out and grab it.

“And that one,” Petunia tells her, at a bushel of dried thyme. Lily does.

“And that.” A bar of rose soap.

“Are you going to pay for all this?” Lily asks, holding them for a second. _ How do you define taking something? _ She puts them back.

Petunia notices, shakes her head, like it’s all a joke, and then says, “No, take them again, put them in your bag, walk away, and don’t come back,” she says. “Now.”

“I don’t want to,” she says, even as her hands are reaching, greedy childs’ hands, she has. They don’t belong to her, her hands or the things on the table.

“Stop,” Petunia says, and Lily thinks, _ OK, it’s OK _, until Petunia points to a pair of glass slippers, expensive and entirely too nice for anyone. She tells her to pick them up and take them.

“Please,” Lily says, forestalling her hands on the eaves of the cabinet, shaking with the force of the thing she’s about to do. “Don’t make me do this.”

“Take them,” Petunia says, “now.”

Lily does. She takes them and shoves them in her bag and they clink as she does so, beautiful opaque flimsy things she will never walk in.

And a guard sees. Petunia sees the guard seeing and tells Lily to run, like she wasn’t going to, which she wasn’t, she was going to put the slippers back or go inside the shop. She could still do that. But then Petunia says the word run in conjunction with the word away and she has no choice.

She goes, wherever away is, trying not to stop, sometimes a vendor will tell her to and so she must, stops and tries something before turning away. She could drop the slippers, she guesses.

She runs through the market, sick of herself, cheeks pink from the exertion, because she’s a thief now, she reminds herself, a thief who runs. She keeps on running until a guard tells her to stop, which she does, halting in the middle of the square.

She doesn’t move, not even as he slaps a pair of handcuffs around her wrists.

* * *

The step-mother is not happy.

“A felon,” she chokes out, as Lily sits on the couch, poorly, a truly awful girl with her hands in her lap. “I could die from embarrassment.”

“Can I get that in writing?” Tonks asks. Lily barely conceals a smile. This is all so stupid to her.

“You are a disgrace,” the step-mother tells her. Lily looks up at her, actually a little hurt by this. What a thing to say. She could never seriously imagine looking at someone and telling them that they’re a disgrace, but her stepmother just did it to her, so.

She doesn’t believe she is a disgrace, necessarily, but she feels herself cringe away from the words. She thinks about being somewhere else. With her Father. With her Mother.

“Maybe,” Tonks says, leaning on the back of the couch, cheek resting on her fist, squashing her face, “she was put up to it.”

Petunia sniffs from where she stands beside the hall table, an ugly painting of a less-ugly vase of flowers behind her. Her step-mother feigns confusion.

“Nymphadora is right, Mother,” Petunia says, moving to stand behind Lily. Tonks makes a face. “I was there. It wasn’t Lily’s fault. She was forced to do it.”

_ What is she doing? _ Lily tries to figure it out in her head, rubbing at her wrists.

“So, Lily,” her step-mother asks, “who put you up to it?”

Then Petunia, who’s meant to be her sister, leans in and whispers in Lily’s ear, “Tell her that it was Mary. Don’t take it back, or make it sound like you’re joking. Do it now.”

Lily knows, irrevocably, then, knows that she knows. She has never felt less free than she does in this moment, and the handcuffs were taken off her less than an hour ago.

“It was Mary,” she chokes out, could cry. Petunia knowing is the worst thing that could’ve happened. She hates this, hates all of it.

Tonks is looking at them both funny, brow furrowed on her pink face.

“Mary,” her step-mother repeats dully. “I might have guessed it.” She turns to Lily, and says, “You’re not to see her again,” like she’s five years old.

“Sorry?” Lily asks. Since when do things like these happen? Since when do things like these happen to her?

There’s a knock at the door, Mary’s voice saying, “Lily, what’s going on? Have you really been arrested, or is Alice fucking with me?”

Tonks bangs her head against a wall.

Her step-mother looks furious. “How dare she come here now?” There’s a pause, a horrible one. Then she says, “Answer the door, and tell her that you never want to see her again.”

Unbidden, Lily’s feet start to move.

“And,” Petunia says, eyes like slate, hard, “tell her you could never be friends with a gypsy. Now.”

It’s like an allergic reaction, a lump in her throat. She feels lightheaded, nauseous.

She feels herself backs up into Tonks, who grabs her hand.

“I can’t,” she says, as she knows, dreadfully, that she can. “_ Please _,” she implores. She would get on her knees if she had to. She wants, desperately, not to be this person.

“Don’t argue,” the stepmother says, “just do it.”

Lily feels her wrench her hand from Tonks’s, the kind of involuntary jerking that accompanies the having to, the must.

She opens the door, finds Mary on the threshold, leaning against the frame.

“Well?” Mary says, chewing off a piece of nail. “What’s happened?”

She doesn’t say anything, something she can’t do for much longer. Her mouth is open, the words in the back of her throat like a cough.

“I don’t want anything to do with you anymore,” she says, meaning it but not meaning it. Awful.

“What?” Mary laughs, incredulous. This hurts so much.

It’s like some kind of culling, standing there and watching Mary realise she’s being serious.

She isn’t, but Mary can’t know that because Petunia said so, and the complexities of this, the politics, why Petunia is doing this to her, that Lucinda ever tried to pass this curse off as a gift—she wants to scream.

“Lily,” Mary says, still doubtful.

The next bit, like a horrible speech in the middle of class, the kind of nightmare where she’s not wearing any clothes.

“God, Lily, what’s going on?”

_ That’s me, that’s me, I’m doing this to her _. Her nose wrinkles. She doesn’t need to force the cry out, it’s just there. She can’t imagine what this looks like, how it doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

Mary, suddenly very serious, looks at her, hard. “What kind of shitty joke is this?”

“Not a joke,” Lily bursts out, crying.

“What’s going on?”

“I could never—I could never be friends with a gypsy.”

Mary looks at her funny. “Alright.”

“I—“ She can’t apologise, she can’t take it back, Petunia said not to.

“You know what? Whatever,” Mary says, hands up like it’s an arrest, and it kind of is, Lily’s just put a stop to everything, their whole friendship. “I’m going home. Come see me when you’re acting normal again.”

Lily sobs. Of course only a good friend, Mary, would leave things open for her. But she doesn’t know if she can ever revisit this, if she’ll ever be allowed to. Can Petunia really just do that? Wreck her whole life, uproot her friends like weeds, just by saying a few words?

She keeps crying as she goes back inside, closes the door. This, she thinks, is the worst kind of nightmare. The worst kind of life.

* * *

She sits upstairs, Tonks quiet on the bed beside her.

“I’ve done—I’ve done _ terrible _ things before,” Lily says, a hand on her wet, red cheek, and it’s true, she has. She’s stolen, she’s hit a boy before because Mary told her to. She’s broken windows, thrown fits, made herself ill. She’s never killed anyone, but she’s sure it’s coming. “But this—this is the _ worst _ thing it’s ever made me do.”

Tonks says little, another bad thing. The anger came earlier, but when Lily cries, Tonks is quiet. That’s just how things work.

She can’t see any world in which Mary takes her at face value. She will know that something else is happening but the fact that Lily can’t tell her what it is will be the chopping-block moment, not the fact that she called her a gypsy and made it sound she planned it.

It’s taken a lot from her, the curse. Now that she has nothing holding her back—no Mother, no Father, no Mary—she sits up on the bed.

“I’m leaving,” she says. “I have to find Lucinda. I have to get her to take it back.”

Tonks, without any prompting, nodding furiously, says, “I know. Come with me.”

In the hall, next to the good cupboard where the doilies and smart crockery hide, containing her Mother’s china, the one that’s always locked, Tonks says, “This’ll help you find her.”

She procures a key from behind her ear, takes a few goes before it slots into the lock. She cracks open the bottom cupboard, shoves her head in, until her whole body somehow—almost—disappears. She has a way of doing that, Tonks. Things don’t work like they should.

“I should’ve—_ fuck _ —I should’ve told you about this years ago, but I— _ buggering shit _!” She emerges, smiling—pink hair, all dust and cobwebs—holding a book to her chest. “But I was a bit embarrassed.”

Lily, cross-legged on the carpet, the house quiet but for the two of them in the hallway, says, “Embarrassed? How?” That’s unlike her.

“Y’know how clumsy I am…” Tonks murmurs, shifting the book slightly.

Lily screws her lips up.

“Anyway, this,” Tonks says, brightly, “is my boyfriend!”

She turns the tome around, and, on the front of the book, in an oval mirror, is a face. Light brown hair, curling at the tips, and Lily can’t see his face, because he’s holding it in his hands.

“Good _ God _, Nymphadora,” he says.

“Oi,” Tonks turns the book back around, “just because I tripped and accidentally made you into a book, doesn’t mean you get to call me by my first name.”

“It does a bit,” the man in the book says.

“Worse things to be turned into,” Lily says, helpfully.

“That’s what I said!” Tonks adds, turning the book back around. “You love books so much, it’s helpful that I made you into one.”

“Or,” man-in-the-book says, but he’s smiling, now, Lily realises, pink lips curled up, light brown eyes, _ happy _ eyes, “you could’ve just, y’know, _ not _ turned me into a book.”

“No pleasing some people,” Tonks says, but she’s smiling, too.

“I’m Remus,” he says.

“Lily,” she tells him. The grinning is infectious. A happy man in a book, a bad fairy and a sad girl on the floor in the quiet part of the house.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Remus says. “Nice to meet anyone, if I’m honest. You’re the first new face I’ve seen in 20 years.”

“But you love my face,” Tonks says, turning her nose into a pig snout.

“I’ve never seen anything like this—like _ you _—before,” Lily says, reaching out to touch the bindings.

“Nobody has,” Tonks says, snout to nose, cheeks pinking. “I don’t want them to. I don’t know what they’d do if they did.”

“Safer to stick me in the back of the cupboard next to the nice china,” Remus says.

“I _ told _ you, it was an _ accident _,” Tonks says, propping Remus, who huffs, between the two of them. “I came into the room one day, sneezed and tripped on the umbrella stand, and next thing you know, he’s a bloody book! A handsome book, but still a book.”

“Trust me,” Remus tells Lily, “I would’ve left her ages ago, except that I kind of love her. A bit. And the no-legs situation.”

“Aw,” Tonks says, “I love you, too, dickweed.”

“So?” Lily says, anxious to move things along. For a second, she thinks about a prince on the side of the road who pushes her out of the way of moving vehicles.

“I want you to take him with you,” Tonks says, passing Remus to Lily. “Open him.”

“_ Fucking hell _,” she hears Remus mutter.

Lily does; maps and texts and illustrations, so many things she hasn’t seen, didn’t know. “What is all this?”

Tonks, confidently, says, “He knows everything.”

“Not everything,” Remus debates.

“Looks like everything,” Lily says.

“I’d be a lot thicker if I did.”

“Do you reckon he’d know anything about Lucinda?” Lily asks Tonks.

“Um, _ yeah _, I reckon he knows stuff about Lucinda.” She reaches out, takes Remus from Lily. “Watch this.”

She says to Remus, “Show me Lucinda,” then opens him.

“_Holy moly_,” Lily whispers.

“Ta-fucking-da,” Remus says. She’s there on the page, shopping at a market.

“That’s brilliant,” Lily says, studying the moving image, “but which market is she at? Do you know?”

“Ah,” Tonks says, “that’s the catch. He can’t tell you where somebody is, only show you pictures.”

“Fair play,” Lily says. “Everything is—bigger, somehow. Is that a wedding registry?”

Tonks smacks herself on the forehead. “Giantville!” she says, triumphant. “She’s going to a wedding in Giantville.” As she says so, a giant strolls across the moving picture.

“Remus, I think we’re going to Giantville,” Lily says.

“Brilliant,” Remus says, as Tonks hands him back to Lily.


	2. Chapter 2

_ Part 2 _

“Remus,” Lily says, nearly tripping over a root, “can you show me a map of the Forest of Pim?”

“Sure,” he says, and she folds him open, looking at mountains, where they’ve been, where they’re going to. She thinks of Tonks, at home, promising to put poison ivy in vases around the house.

“I think,” she says, “it’s best if we head west.” She doesn’t pretend to know how to read maps, has always sucked at it.

“You mean east,” Remus says, at the front of the book.

“I mean east.”

It’s nice; forest, no-one to tell her yes or no, a friend.

She’s still looking at the map when she hears laughter and the screams. The first thing she thinks is: found, she’s been found. She’s expecting to see Petunia, someone that can drag her back home. Instead, she runs towards the sound, an utterly foolish thing to do.

It’s coming from a clearing; she waits behind a tree, grabs a sprig of pine that’s in her way, peers around the bough. She remembers being five, different tree, different day, someone calling her name, maybe Mary, maybe her Mum.

She sees men, a group of them. There’s one on the ground, and he’s prettier than she’ll ever be, prettier than the Prince. She wonders where that thought came from, why he’s still in her head. The bruise yellowing on her hip from where he knocked her to the ground, aches.

The one on the ground—tall, which surprises her, because the pointed tips of his ears immediately mark him out as an elf. Most barely reach past five foot. He’s six foot, at least, probably more.

He’s also getting the living shit beat out of him, and he seems to be enjoying it.

Smiling, sprawling in the dirt, welty cheeks and a smile a mile wide. Face black and blue. Laughing. Drunk.

One of the others takes a swing at him. The elf’s hair, she can see from here, black strands in his face, is matted with blood.

And she doesn’t get it; she understands most things, but not this.

Before she can stop herself, she’s out in the clearing, gasping, red and confused and stupid for confronting three—_four_—men who don’t know what they could do to her, what she would let them do to her.

“What—?” she says, breathless, Remus under her arm, face against her side, bag hard on her shoulder, “What are you _ doing _ to him?”

They seem surprised, all of them, except the elf, perhaps, out of it enough to not care.

“Who’s this?” Three of them, rearing up to face her. She feels infinitely stupid, everywhere.

“_Lily_,” Remus warns.

“I—” She thinks of bravado, a stupid prince, what he would do, not understanding why she thinks of him every time she’s scared. What would he do, if he were here? What would she?

“Look,” she starts again, “I think you should leave him alone.”

“He was asking for it,” one of them tells her. _ Funny_, she thinks, _ people usually say that about the women._ _People usually say that about _ her_. _

“I don’t care,” she says, “Leave.”

They don’t, unsurprisingly, laughingly. Why should they?

“Lily, we should go,” Remus whispers to her.

But they’re still laughing, the men, and the elf joins in, for a moment, uproarious, and the second he does, one kicks him in the mouth. The elf’s teeth are red, like he’s bitten into a heart; he spits a bloody mouthful on the ground.

She can’t help it; the same as tripping over her own feet, the same as loving her Mum even when she isn’t there, it’s a gut reflex. She steps forward and punches the nearest man in the face.

While he reels, she reaches for the knife in her bag, hoping she won’t have to use it.

“That’s it, sweetheart,” the elf says, still laughing. Half out-of-it, half dead on the ground, he calls out to her, “Kick his ass!”

It’s a joke, she knows it’s a joke, but it doesn’t matter; she drops the bag, and the knife, and she does, aiming the kick perfectly.

She was willing to stop, to wait and see if they’d leave, after that, but the elf isn’t. On the ground, he’s shouting out a lot of things she doesn’t understand. It’s all a big joke to him, being beat up in the middle of the forest.

“Get him in the balls!” he yells. Lily wrenches the first man out of the way, cuffing him the front of his shirt, goes for the next one, kneeing him right in the crotch.

The elf yells, “Rabbit punch!”, and Lily gets him, the same man, the second one, at the base of the skull.

“Combo!” he shouts, and Lily goes for the third man, jabs and crosses. “Knee him!” the elf adds, and Lily does, in the upper thigh.

“Front step kick! Roundhouse kick!”

She ends up on the ground, next to the elf, and just like that, the others are gone, running off into the thick of the forest.

They all seemed to think she was something to fear, which doesn’t make much sense to her. Just a second ago Petunia was making her steal. Just a year ago her Mother was dying and she couldn’t stop it. She’s never been feared, only fearful.

And now they’re gone because she beat them and she’s on the ground next to a very tall elf who’s vomiting his guts up. If his guts were blood. Because there’s a lot of blood, most of it, she thinks, in his mouth.

“Are you alright?” she asks, as if someone’s stepped on the back of his shoe, not as if he might be dying, which, it has just hit her, he very seriously might be.

“Alright?” he says, on his forearms, filthy, sardonic, “Never better.”

“Well, I’m _ sorry_,” she says, wrenching her bag open, going for the nettle tonic, dabbing some on her fingers, “for trying to save your life.”

She goes to pat some on his swelling eye and cheeks, but he grabs her wrist, tugs her close, hard. “You should be,” he tells her. “They were going to kill me.”

“And you were going to let them?” she asks. “Stupid boy.”

He shoves her away, dastardly. “You got any more drink in that bag of yours?”

“I think you’ve had enough,” she says, sitting back on the dirt, knees underneath her bum. Wetness on her fingers still, dumbfounded. An elf, ridiculously tall, who doesn’t want saving, happy to lie in the muck and his own blood. She doesn’t understand it.

“Can you, like, go now?” he asks. “I’m perfectly fine on my own.”

“I can’t leave you like this.”

“Oh my _ God_,” he says, like she’s the most annoying person he’s never come across, and who knows, she probably is.

“What do you want, then?” she asks, and he gives her a look, like she’s stupid as well as irksome.

“To be left the fuck alone, would be nice,” he says.

“Just leave him, Lily,” she hears Remus say. The elf groans, supine on the ground.

“Fine,” she says, gets up, brushes the dirt off her skirt. She grabs the bottle of nettle and chucks it at the elf. “Keep it,” she tells him. “I’ve got another.”

She kits up, bag on her shoulder, Remus in the crook of her arm. As she goes to leave, she hears the elf moan, again.

When she turns around, he’s trying to sit up, pressing the lip of the bottle to his open wounds.

“You’re doing it wrong,” she tells him.

“Piss off,” he tells her, slurring a bit between the words.

She puts her things back down, gets back on her knees beside him, holds out her hand for the bottle. He gives it to her, spilling some on her skirt, and she flicks some tonic at him.

“Ow,” he says, closing one eye.

“Oh, shut up,” she tells him, dabbing some along a too-sharp cheekbone. Her Mum used to use this for scrapes and cuts along her knees, one gash that went so deep she could almost see the bone.

He glares at her as she does it, too drunk to do it himself. He’s very sharp, this elf.

“I’m Lily, by the way,” she says, pressing some more tonic to her fingertips.

“I don’t care,” he tells her.

“Are you going to tell me your name?” she asks, looking back at him.

He hesitates over this, then says, “It’s Sirius,” pouting.

“It’s nice to meet you,” she tells him.

“God, what is your deal?” he snaps at her, then.

“Excuse me?”

“Going around, being all nice to people, trying to patch me up when I was _ quite _ happy to lay there and be kicked to death. What is your problem?”

“_My _problem?” she asks, taken aback.

“Yeah.”

“Right now,” she tells him, hands on her knees, leaning forward, “_you’re _ my problem. You’re a rude, ill-mannered, highly disagreeable elf who is, for starters, _ way _ too tall, and, I bet, willing to push away anyone, even a perfect stranger, who just wants to help him, for God’s sake. What the fuck is _ your _ problem?”

She’s snapped, she realises, perhaps unceremoniously, but he shuts up for a second, quiets in manner, sits there and lets her work. Then, he says, almost indistinctly:

“Don’t want your help.”

“Well, tough. I’m giving it to you anyway.” She grabs her bag, her glass bottle of water, hands the latter to him summarily and says, “Drink.”

He lifts it to his lips while she’s working, pours some in his mouth, and, still pouting, dribbles some over his lips, which she’s not entirely sure he does on purpose. He’s still quite drunk.

“God, you are such a baby,” she says, using a hand to wipe his chin.

He stays still until she’s done, hopefully sobering up a bit, until she leans back and surveys his face, stoppering the cork back in the bottle.

“Where are you from, anyway?” she asks him.

“Why do you care?”

“Jesus, I’m just trying to make conversation. You’re really hard to get along with, you know that?”

He scowls at her, then says, “I’m from Pim.”

“Great,” she says, getting up, dusting off her skirt and offering him a hand, which he declines, clambering to his feet. “We’ll go there now.”

“No fucking way,” he tells her, stumbling a bit.

“I’m sorry?”

“No fucking way are you coming home with me,” he says, swaying a bit on his feet.

She eyes his knocking knees, like a fresh calf, all knobbly bones and trembling. “I don’t think you’ve got much of a choice.”

“Fine,” he says, and starts off to the right, unsteadily. She follows.

“Nope, it’s this way,” he decides, changing direction.

“Great,” she tells him.

“Good plan,” Remus whispers to her.

“Shut up,” she tells him, “it’s fine.”

They continue like this, walking for what feels like hours. The sun’s set by the time they arrive. Sirius has sobered up a bunch.

She feels hot and sweaty, beaten about by the sun-soaked ground, like the moment before you go into the shade and can’t see.

It’s dark out, and quaint. Everything flickers around her, fireflies, candles lit in windows, her interest in being there with a too-tall grumpy elf.

Before they can reach the town square, however, at the end of which, she can see, is a brightly-lit pub out of an old barn-style building, Sirius shoves her and Remus down behind a disused barrel.

“I—_excuse _ me!” she protests, brushing her hair out of her face. “What was that for?”

“Shut up,” he says, getting down behind her, shoving a hand over her mouth. She is getting quite sick of this good-looking–boys–shoving–her–down–behind–things business. His palm smells like blood.

She shrugs him off. “I thought you lived here,” she hisses.

“I do.”

“Then,” she says, making a face, “why are we sneaking around?”

“Because,” he says, “if they spot us coming, I will _ literally _ kill myself.”

“If _ who _ spots us coming—I—_what _ is going on?”

He sneaks over to a bushel of hay, beckoning for her to follow. She does, creeping over to crouch beside him, the two of them hovering behind the sweet-smelling grass. 

“You know,” he says, running over to a group of stacked wooden crates, speaking just loudly enough for her to hear, “how elves are forced to sing and dance?”

“Yeah,” she says, hurrying out into the clearing between the two spots of cover, “so?” 

Just before she can duck behind the crates, next to Sirius, her foot snags a twig. It snaps underneath her heel, and the second it does, lights go on all around them, like a robbery.

She hears someone call out, “Visitors!”, the shuffling of feet like feathers, and two elves—much shorter than Sirius—jump out from behind them.

“Shit!” Sirius yells, coming over and grabbing Lily’s hand, ushering her away from the elves, towards the town square. “Shit shit shitting shit!”

“What’s going on?” she shouts, as she drags her into the square.

“Just run!” he tells her.

As the two of them sprint for the pub across the square, a jaunty tune starts up. The square is bordered by wooden houses, thatched roofs and flower boxes, and flooded, on all sides, by dancing, singing elves, popping up along boardwalks, in the windows of houses, on the roofs like thieves.

“Christ,” Sirius says, as they run, dragging Lily along behind him, harsh grip on her wrist. “This isn’t even one of the good ones.”

They’re bombarded on all sides, elves clad like leprechauns, all green like clover and meadow, startling in the lights.

The music, she can’t tell where it’s coming from. She can see and hear the instruments being played around her but can’t pick out any individual sounds.

They’re like celebrities, she thinks, someone important, squashed by hordes of people, prevented from getting to the other side of the square. _ This must be how James feels _, she thinks, utterly furious with herself for doing so.

She holds Remus tight to her side, Sirius pulling her along, growling in frustration. They’re almost there. She nearly trips over her cloak but Sirius keeps her upright, would probably drag her if she fell.

The loudness, the beating, it informs her pulse. She can feel it in her pelvis, her chest, giving her a steady headache.

Sirius shoves her again, nothing gentle about it, into the open door of the pub. The music abates as he slams the door closed. “Fuck off!” Sirius shouts.

“Bit harsh,” she says, rubbing her arm. She takes a look around the pub. It’s completely candlelit; they hang from chandeliers, sit on tables and along the bar, where people are gathered, quietly. The light reflects spilled drinks along the counter, wet mud from people’s boots on the floor.

“Sit down,” he says, shoving her towards a table. _ He’s quite violent _. “I’m going to get drinks,” he tells her, walking toward the bar.

She looks over at him, approaching the barkeep—a pretty girl with blonde ringlets, someone Lily would like to talk to—whose pert nose goes completely red at the tip. Sirius is smiling, suddenly, and it’s so outrageous she could laugh, how utterly real he is all of a sudden.

“He’s charming,” Remus whispers, against her armpit.

“Hush,” she tells him, placing him face-down on the tabletop, shrugging off her cloak and wrapping it around the back of her chair.

Sirius, unbelievably—or perhaps believably, she already knows deeply how she knows nothing about him—is back within seconds, laden with drinks that she’s sure he didn’t pay for.

“I don’t drink whiskey,” she says.

“It’s not for you,” he tells her, uncapping the bottle, taking a swig straight from the neck.

He slides a beer towards her, instead.

“Thanks,” she says, and he grimaces, like she’s said something terrible.

“What is that, anyway?” he asks, gesturing with the bottle at Remus. “Diary?”

There’s a beat. “Um, atlas,” she lies, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Why don’t you like music?” she asks, moving on suddenly.

He raises an eyebrow, says, without a shred of remorse, “Because it’s shit.”

“Not all music is shit,” she says, doubtful.

“It is where I come from,” he says, shrugging.

She takes a sip of beer, broaches her next question tentatively, like he’ll walk right out of here if she pushes too hard. “So,” she asks, “you don’t want to be an entertainer, then?”

He looks at her, grimaces. “Not really.”

“What do you want to do, instead?”

He shrugs, takes a sip of whiskey. “Why do you even care?”

“Sorry?” she asks.

“Why do you give a shit?”

He’s so unnecessarily abrupt, she thinks. She could know him well, if he just let her.“We’re fast eaters,” the second ogre says. A third one approaches them from behind, she doesn’t know where he came from. Sirius screams, again. “Just do,” she tells him.

He looks at her, hard. Then he shakes his head, sighing, rakes a hand through his hair. “I dunno, anyway,” he says. “Just not an entertainer.”

“Shame,” Remus says, “you’re entertaining us plenty.”

Sirius looks up at her. “Sorry?” he asks. She gives him a blank stare. He casts his gaze around, looking for the source of the noise. “Was that you?”

“I didn’t hear anything,” she says, placing a hand on Remus’s back cover.

Satisfied, or unsatisfied, either way, he hasn’t found anything, he turns back to her. “Anyway,” he says. “It’s not like I’ve got a choice, anyway.”

“What do you mean?” she asks.

He gives her a look like she’s very, very stupid, then points to his ears. “Because I’m a fucking _ elf_?”

“Oh, I—_oh _,” she says. It shocks her, sometimes, how little she knows about the world. She has it so good, she forgets that, even for a girl who has to do what she’s told.

“I forgot,” she tells him earnestly, “the—the Eflin restrictions Ser Tom passed.” She saddens, deeply and suddenly, like blowing out a wick.

“Yeah,” he says, “that whole chestnut.” He scrapes his chair back, makes to go towards the bar.

“‘No elf shall be engaged in any occupation other than singing, juggling and/or tomfoolery,’” Remus quotes. “From the looks of things he’s already engaged in the latter.”

“OK, what the fuck?” Sirius says, whirling. He starts looking, under the table, in Lily’s bag, until he picks up Remus, looks under him, then at the blank face. “It’s coming from this.”

Lily tries to snatch it back from him. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she says.

“I’m right,” he says, holding it out of her reach.

“You’re not,” she insists, “it’s just an atlas.”

“No, it’s not,” he says, glaring.

“Yes, it is.”

“Isn’t.”

“Is.”

“Isn’t!”

“Is!”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Remus says, materialising suddenly in the front of the book. Sirius almost jumps, lifting an eyebrow at the cover.

“What the _ fuck_?” he says.

“Both of you, be _ quiet_,” Lily hisses. “Sirius, sit _ down_,” she tells him, tugging at his sleeve.

He does, putting Remus down on the table between them, eyeing him suspiciously.

He turns to Lily. “What’s his deal?” he asks in an undertone.

“I can fucking _ hear _ you, you know,” Remus tells him.

“Yeah, um, shut up, Yellow Pages,” Sirius says, standing up. “I’m going to get more drinks.” He gestures to Remus. “You want anything?”

“Go fuck yourself,” Remus tells him.

“Right, will do that,” he says, heading off. “Don’t wait around, might be a while.”

* * *

Back at the house, Tonks walks into Lily’s room—cold, the way they get when no-one’s been filling them with life. Funny, Tonks thinks, how she’s been gone a week and no-one has even tried to look for her. They haven’t even told her Father.

She’s fully intending to hide the letter, put it under a pillow, spell it so it doesn’t reveal itself until Lily gets back, it’s just that—well, she doesn’t know when that will be, exactly.

Anyway, she’s fully intending to hide the letter until she sees Petunia rifling through Lily’s trunk.

“What the _ shit _ are you doing?” she says, immediately, forgetting herself but not really.

Petunia starts, looking like she’s not doing anything wrong, like she’s fully entitled to _ everything _ in this house, the _ prick._

“Just a little tidying up,” says the stepmother. Tonks whirls. She’s leaning against the doorframe, like she followed her up the stairs, like she doesn’t trust her in her own house.

“What’s that?” she asks, gesturing to the letter in Tonks’s hand.

“Nothing,” Tonks says, shoving it down her top. “Nothing. It’s personal.”

“Give it to me,” she says, holding out her hand for it. Tonks rolls her eyes at her, giving it up, if only because she has to. She considers eating it, briefly.

“A letter,” the stepmother says, turning it over. “For Lily.”

This piques Petunia’s interest more than rifling through a trunk that doesn’t belong to her. She comes over to look at the invitation in her mother’s hand, a red wax seal on thick, yellow parchment.

The stepmother sucks in a breath. “The Prince’s coronation ball,” she says.

“What?” Petunia says, peering over her mother’s shoulder.

“He’s invited that—insolent little _ witch._” She pauses, in thought. Tonks scratches her arm, wonders if it’s too late to take off, lace their tea with belladonna, anything.

“I think,” the stepmother tells Petunia, “that it’s time we paid a visit to your stepfather in town. We wouldn’t want to miss the coronation ball after the Prince has so graciously invited us.”

“Alternatively,” Tonks says, “you could, y’know, _ not _ go. Seeing as how he hasn’t invited you.”

It’s worth the pay cut.

* * *

“So,” Sirius says, perched, ankles crossed, on a barrel, “you can really show me anything, anywhere in the whole kingdom?”

Remus, uninterested but unable to go anywhere, says, “Yeah, pretty much.”

“You’re kind of like a walking, talking encyclopaedia then, aren’t you. Except for the walking part, of course.” He smiles, meanly. Remus tells him he’s a fuckwit. Lily tells them to stop fighting.

“Shut up,” Sirius says, suddenly, handing Remus back to Lily and shoving them both down behind the barrel.

“What’s going on?” Lily whispers, adjusting her shoulder strap.

Up ahead, she realises, are a bunch of what can only be palace soldiers, shepherding elves into the back of a wagon.

“Rounding up singers,” Sirius says. “For the Prince’s coronation.”

They sit, for a bare moment, the horribleness of watching this happen and being able to do nothing. Lily feels full of righteousness, like when that boy called Mary a dirty gypsy and she hit him, like when she was running from the police because her terrible sister told her to. Like when she was standing in front of an arrogant, impossible boy on a hill.

“Sirius,” Lily says, suddenly, “you’ve got to come with me to Lamia, to petition the Prince.”

“The fuck?” Sirius hisses, turning to look at her in the grass. “No fucking way.”

“So you can do something other than—this,” she insists, gesturing at the wagon. “You’ve got to _ stop _ this.”

They’re singing, she realises, the elves. The soldier’s breastplates and helmets are completely black, so she can and can’t see them.

“Let me get this straight,” Sirius says, “you want me to go to Lamia on my fucking own?” He looks floored, a little angry with her.

“No,” she says. “No, I’m saying Remus and I are going to Giantville, which is on the way, so you should come with us.” She realises, now, what she’s asking, how staunch the no is going to be when he says it. She met him five hours ago in the middle of the forest getting the life beat out of him because he felt like it. He has no reason to do any of this. “We’ll go with you to Lamia.”

“The Prince,” Sirius says, “doesn’t give two shits about elves. He thinks they’re a fucking joke.”

“They?” Remus says. “You said they.”

“Fuck off,” Sirius says, “I meant we.”

She rolls her eyes. _ Boys_. She thinks back to James, completely unsure about what his future as king was going to look like, and then how he ran, unthinking, straight for her, all because she called his name, and he barely knew her.

“I—” she starts, slowly, can’t believe how she was about to say this, how she’s still going to say it. It’s like she’s confessing to a murder, doing him a service, which he doesn’t deserve, because the Prince is a prick and she knows this, so why is she going to say what she’s about to say? “I’ve met the Prince and—I don’t know, I think—I think he might be different from his uncle.”

Both boys turn to look at her. Sirius’s lip twitches.

“Why?” Remus asks.

“Because he’s all hunky-fucking-dory?” Sirius adds, hungry look in his eyes, because he’s caught on in half a second, of course he has.

“No.” She says it bluntly, sinks her teeth into her lip. They look at each other, then back at her.

The memory of her and him, standing on a knolly ridge, demanding she come back and face him, makes her legs ache. She’s been kneeling behind this barrel for too long. She stands, suddenly, looking after the wagon, which has disappeared down the road, taking most of the light with it. She’s so out of it for a moment she almost misses it when Sirius says, “Fine.”

“Sorry?” both her and Remus say at the same time.

“I’ll come with you on your stupid expedition,” he tells them, “but only so I can see the look on your face when we meet the Prince.”

He gets up from behind the barrel, starts walking down the beaten path.

Lily follows, bag on her shoulder, Remus under her arm.

“To be fair, you did hesitate a bit when he asked if you thought he was hunky dory,” Remus tells her.

“Shut up,” she says, and they walk on.

* * *

“You sure he knows where he’s going?” Sirius asks the next morning, stifling a yawn. They’re back in the forest, the quickest way to Giantville.

“_Obviously _ I know where we’re going,” Remus says. “Would you rather navigate?”

“No thanks,” Sirius says, smiling.

“Why is he coming with us, again?” Remus asks Lily.

“Boys, if you can’t play nice,” Lily says, rubbing her left eye, “then you can’t play at all.”

“You know there are ogres in this part of the forest, right?” Sirius says to Remus, ignoring Lily.

“Yeah,” Remus says. “So?”

Something in a nearby bush rustles.

Sirius grabs Lily’s arm. “What?” she says.

“The rustling always comes before the screaming and the running,” he tells her, stark-white. “I knew this would happen! Leave it to Remus to lead us right into certain death. They’ll find us in pieces across the forest floor.”

A bunny, bushy-tailed and white, scampers out of the rosemary thicket and across their path.

“Oh, it’s a _ bunny_,” Remus says. “You know, statistically speaking, the last time someone died of a bunny attack was fucking _ never _.”

“Kill yourself,” Sirius tells Remus, releasing Lily’s arm.

“Trust me, I’ve thought about it a lot more since meeting you.”

There’s a snap, again. “Oh my God, this is it,” he says. “We’re going to die, Frell. We’re literally going to die right in the middle of this fucking forest and I blame the two of you.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Lily says.

Opportunely, an ogre—full-grown, massive and hulking—steps out from behind a tree.

Sirius screams, grabbing Lily by both arms. “WE’RE GOING TO DIE!”

“Sirius, shut the fuck up,” Remus whispers.

“Please don’t eat me,” Sirius says to the ogre. He’s much taller than him, much taller than all of them. Brutish, brandishing a heavy wooden club. Lily’s never seen one up close before. His eyes are angry, starved.

“I am the ogre, Nish,” he tells them, voice deep and booming. Lily’s surprised. _ Nice of him to introduce himself, _ she thinks. _ Would be nice of him to not kill us_, she thinks.

“How do you like being eaten?” he asks them. “Baked, boiled, shish-kebabed?”

“Shish-kebab for a Nish-kebab?” Sirius asks.

“_Shut up, Sirius, _” Remus hisses.

It’s like she’s walked into a story from her childhood, ogres who eat girls in the woods. This feels like it could be happening to someone else, not her. Most of her life has felt like that.

“How about free range?” she suggests. She starts feeling, desperately, for the knife in her bag.

“Oh, free range!” Sirius says. “You ever had a free range roast chicken? Oh! Mamma mia!” He kisses his fingers.

A second ogre steps out from the gap between the trees. They all scream.

“Please—please don’t eat us,” Lily says, aware of the absurdity even as she speaks. “I can help! I’m—I’m an ogre ally.”

“Oh, God,” Remus mutters.

“Frell,” Sirius whispers, holding her upper arm, “maybe we should make a run for it. Leave Remus, he’ll only weigh us down.”

“I’m literally _ right _ here,” Remus says.

Lily tries to ignore them, appeal to the ogres. “I was at a rally, on your behalf, the other day, maybe you heard about it?”

“I think they might’ve missed that one in the _ Daily Frell_,” Sirius says.

“You!” the orge snaps, pointing at Sirius. “Shut up!”

He doesn’t. “Goodness gracious,” he says, “these ogres, no manners.”

“I know things have been bad for you, and the Giants too, and elves,” she says. “Please, I’ll fight harder, just let us go.”

“We’ll make it quick, love,” Nish tells her, and she wants to cry, thinking about what Sirius said before. She’s going to die in a forest with an elf and a talking book. She doesn’t want to die.

“We’re fast eaters,” the second ogre says. A third one approaches them from behind, she doesn’t know where he came from. Sirius screams, again.

“Please,” Lily says, thinks about begging. She could, she’s begged before. She begged Petunia not to make her steal, begged her Mother not to die. “I want to help, please let me help.”

“Help?” Nish spits. “From a human?”

Lily nods, horrified.

“Humans,” Nish tells them, “took _ everything _ from us. I was an ogre of leisure, with a simple life. Next thing you know—”

“Oh, not this again!” another of the ogres says. “Nish, hurry up! I’m starving.”

_ They probably are, _ she thinks. The ogres were banished to the forest years ago, cutting off a lot of their food supplies. They’d have to be living off grouse, other small fowl.

Nish pulls out a knife. Sirius steps in front of Lily.

“You,” Nish says, gesturing to Lily. “Come here.”

_ That’s funny_, she thinks, as the order comes over her, as she hands Remus to Sirius, as she feels herself start to move. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like. The whole time she’s been with Sirius and Remus, neither one of them has once told her to do something.

“Frell, what are you _ doing_?” Sirius says. “Stop! Forget what he said!”

She—where was she, just now? What was she meant to be doing?

“What’s going on?” she asks, looking around. Why are there three ogres? Why is Sirius being grabbed by the back of his shirt?

“They’re going to eat us, Frell,” Sirius says, remorseful, and she laughs.

“Keep your mouth _ shut_,” one of the ogres says, lumbering over to her. “Don’t move,” he tells her. “It’ll be over soon.”

She has to, she’s got no choice.

The ogre drags a length of rope out, ties it around her, the fibres scratching her hands and feet. Remus is dropped by the tree with Lily’s bag, just a normal book. Sirius is tied up next to him.

She can hear Sirius say to Remus, “You couldn’t’ve, like, showed us a big picture of an ogre coming our way? That would’ve been supremely helpful.”

“For the last time,” Remus says, irritably, “it doesn’t _ work _ like that.”

It doesn’t take long for the ogres to assemble a fire. Her heart falls out of line, like most of her body. _ Oh God _ , she thinks, _ I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Tonks, or Dad. Will they know I’m dead? Who will tell them? _

Everything seems to happen very quickly and yet in slow motion. Soon the fire is licking up, almost as tall as her, a terrifying steeple of flame.

One of the ogres comes over to grab her, suddenly, moving her because she can’t. Her heart lurches, she didn’t think this was really going to happen. _ Oh well, _ she thinks, _ at least I’ll get to see Mum. _

The sound of hoofbeats doesn’t even occur to her, the thought that there were no horses here a second ago. She’s close enough to feel the incredible heat, flushing her neck, and suddenly the sound of hooves beating the ground is everywhere, like wings, like panic.

Sirius says, “Oh my _ God,_” and then, in a voice much louder than the others, a voice that she knows, yells, “LET HER GO!”

The ogre, mercifully, does. The pressure on her wrists abates, and she finds herself stumbling, the ground all around her. She lands on her side, the familiar bruise throbbing. She looks up.

It’s James. James is there, utterly furious, like a beacon, jumping off his horse, pulling a sword out of his scabbard, and running straight for her, like he did weeks ago.

“Frell, oh my God,” he says, getting down beside her, holding onto her arms, brushing the hair out of her face, looking into her eyes, and she wants to cry because she isn’t supposed to say a word. “Talk to me,” he implores, and it’s like she can breathe again.

“Nice pants,” she chokes out.

He smiles at her, the brilliant boy. “They’re leather,” he tells her, and, in one swift motion, cuts through the rope around her hands. “I’ll be right back.”

There are other men, too, she’s only just realised, who must be soldiers, guards. James runs back over to his horse, hoists himself into the saddle.

All around her, men are running down ogres. She starts tearing desperately at the ropes around her ankles. A guard wrests a club from the biggest ogre, another halts one who tries to escape, a third disarms the other.

It’s over rather quickly, she thinks, as she gets up. The fire is being doused, the ropes around Sirius being cut loose.

She runs over to the tree, as James, astride his horse, addresses the ogres, assembled by the guards in the centre of the clearing.

“Are any of you one of the monsters who killed my Father?” he asks. He’s all King, right now, incensed and yet lethally calm.

The ogres look up at him in shock. “King Fleamont was a good man!” one protests. “We lived in peace during his reign, why would we kill him?”

James looks at them all in turn, gaze severe. “Take your friends and find breakfast elsewhere,” he tells them.

They leave. James dismounts, and comes over to her and Sirius, who has freed himself of the ropes, as they stand next to the tree.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he asks her, bemused. “And with an elf for protection?”

He and Sirius look at each other, now.

“Who the fuck are you?” Sirius asks him.

“Who the fuck are _ you_?” James counters.

Sirius holds his gaze for a moment longer, then shrugs, and says, “Fair play.”

“Tell me,” James says, looking back at her, “do you get a kick out of near-death experiences?”

He’s talking about the cart that almost killed her. He’s talking about the grassy hill, his hands all over her.

“No,” she says, stupidly, defiantly. “I had things under control.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, nodding, “yeah, I could see that from the fire and the ropes and the fact he was about to eat you. You’re mad, you know that?”

She doesn’t like the tickle of a compliment in that statement, doesn’t like any of this, least of all him. She looks at Sirius, who’s trying not to laugh, then scoffs, walks away from both of them, impossible boys.

“So, are you going to thank me or not?” James asks her, following.

“Absolutely not,” she says.

“I could have you beheaded, you know,” he tells her.

“That’s nice,” she says, “very chivalrous.”

“So you’re not going to thank me, then.”

She stops, whirls, catches sight of Sirius over by the tree, arguing with a book. It makes her smile, despite herself. “I guess not,” she says. She looks back at James, at the bright red patch on the side of his arm.

“You’re bleeding,” she says, blunt.

“Oh.” He looks down. “It’s just—s’just a scratch,” he says, shrugging. It is not just a scratch, they both know this.

“You better—” she starts, hesitates for a moment. “You better let me help you with that.”

She walks back over to the boys, grabs the bottle of nettle tonic from her bag, straightens to find them both looking at her.

“What?” she asks.

“Worth it,” Sirius says, gesturing to the two of them.

“I wish they’d eaten you,” she tells him.

* * *

It ends up with them outside of the forest, by a river so there’s water and more green than her eyes know what to do with, which is helpful, because his shirt is off and her hands get very clammy, suddenly.

Once she’s done with the nettle and tied a scrap of James’s shirt around his arm, (“That’s my _ favourite _ shirt,” he’d protested, as she’d torn a strip off them bottom. “Well, tough,” she’d told him, and he’d smiled hard, enough to make cut her dirty fingernails into her palms.) she looks up to find him looking away like he’s tried to steal something.

“Frell,” he asks her, very sincerely, “am I going to die?”

“You’ll live,” she says, getting up. “Put your shirt back on,” she tells him.

He laughs. When this happens she finds that she wants to commit some kind of violent act to stop herself from doing something, she doesn’t know what. She sees Sirius over on a log, shaking his head at her. She gives him the finger.

“Where were you headed, anyway?” he asks her. “Or were you just here to be murdered by ogres?”

“Giantsville, actually,” she says, “I’m meeting my Godmother.” Not strictly a lie.

“Oh,” he says, “well, that’s on our way back to Lamia, we’ll accompany you.”

“No, thanks,” she says, immediate.

“Yeah,” he says, pausing, grinning at her, “but it’s so much easier to rescue you if I don’t have to commute.”

She pokes his bad arm.

"Ow," he says, wincing.

Sirius, ambling over, says, “Yeah, we’d literally rather be back in that forest surrounded by ogres than have you come with us.”

“I have food and wine,” James says, gesturing to the horse packs.

“Please come with us,” Sirius says.

“No way,” Lily says, whirling on Sirius.

“Tough luck, Frell,” Sirius says, patting her on the head, walking off with James. “So, Potter, which one’s my horse?”

* * *

He gives her the dapple-grey mare, offers to help her into the saddle. She hoists herself up by using the stirrup instead, almost kicks him in the face with her free foot because she doesn’t know what to do with people who try to help her.

They’re walking along the beach, hoofprints in damp sand and Sirius yelling at seagulls, trying to run them down. She’s had to put Remus in her bag, felt bad as she did it, thinking of the dusty china cupboard at home.

“So, travelling with an elf?” James asks. “Your boyfriend couldn’t make it?”

_ God, he’s so tactless, _ she thinks. No hope of being a good King when he asks questions like that, says exactly what he’s thinking.

“No,” she says.

“Right.” He bites his lip, turns away.

“I don’t have one,” she tells him, she’s not sure why she does. It just doesn’t seem right to mislead him, even though it’s easy to, he’s so pitiful and hopeful, like a puppy.

When she says this, though, he looks at her like she’s Spring, beautiful and new enough to take up several months of his life.

She doesn’t like it. “What about you?” she says, again, not sure why she does. She’s become braver, bolder, since running away from home. The salt spray coming off the endless, tumbling waves stings her eyes and nose, turn her hair into an everywhere thing. “No fancy lover left at the palace?”

“Oh, multiple, Frell,” he tells her, grinning impossibly.

“You’re a prat,” she says, outright, looking straight ahead. Sirius laughs behind her.

“Quit eavesdropping,” she tells Sirius, turning in her saddle to look at him. Her horse plods on, her pelvis rocking in her seat with the motion of it.

“Can’t help it,” he says, “I’m bored.” He’s comes up, level with them, on an extremely bad-tempered black stallion. “Your Honour,” he says, nodding at James.

“It’s Highness,” James tells him.

“Um, yeah, there’s no way I’m calling you that.”

James shrugs. “Fair enough,” he says. The likelihood of him doing that for anyone else, she thinks, even for her, are slim.

“We wanted to talk to you, actually,” Lily says, “about the Elfin restrictions.”

Sirius looks at James. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”

James ignores this. “Yeah?” James asks, casually, looking at Lily. “What about them?”

She frowns at him. He’s being too cavalier. It’s like he doesn’t care.

“Well,” she starts, “don’t you think they’re a bit shit?”

“I mean,” he says, baffled, “I hadn’t really thought about it, if I’m honest.”

She raises her eyebrows. “You’re about to become King,” she reminds him, “you should probably start thinking about things like that.”

“Well, I mean, not for a while, anyway,” he says, raking a hand through his hair. “Look, you should talk to my Uncle when we get back. If you make a good argument I’m sure he’ll come around.”

Lily and Sirius glance at each other. He gives her a look like, _ What did you expect? _

She expected him to be more forthcoming, as willing to do this as he was to save her from dying.

“Whatever,” Sirius says, wheeling his horse around. "You give shit advice, by the way," he tells James, riding off. His face has gone hard, Lily notices, like a frost, toughened glass.

She goes quiet in her saddle, fiddling with the reigns, thumbs fidgeting with the leather, back and forth over the stitching.

James notices this, notices her, and goes, “Frell?”

“You really don’t care about anything, do you?” she asks him, painfully, looking down.

“What?” he asks, shocked. She glances up, and the hurt is plain on his face.

“Laws like that prohibit people’s freedom. It means the elves are forced into entertainment whether they like it or not. Had you really never thought about that?”

“Well, I mean—” he starts, raking a hand over the back of his neck.

She presses on, hard. “You’re about to become _ King_,” she tells him, again, in case he’s forgotten, which it seems like he has. “You’ll have a ridiculous amount of power, the kind that a lot of people would use for bad but that you could use for good. You could change everything and you don’t even care.”

“Hey,” he says, getting defensive, “it’s not like I _ asked _ to become King. I’ve got no say in the matter.”

She feels this like a deep cut, bone-drilling. It seems such a strange thing to be upset about, being so powerful. She’s had no say in anything for her whole life.

“Thanks to the laws your Uncle has put in place the world is _ full _ of people who have no say in the matter,” she snaps. “These restrictions and banishments mean that anyone who isn’t human has no control over their lives are run.” _ And me, _ she thinks. _ And me. _ “It’s persecution. It’s—it’s _ oppression_. I can’t believe you don’t care.” Her voice breaks a little as she tells him, “You could at least pretend to.”

He stares at her, stares and stares.

She’s breathing, hard, disbelieving and full that powerful, change–the–world kind of feeling. “Nobody should be forced to do things they don’t want to do,” she tells him.

She could cry, _ scream _ in frustration as she wheels her horse back around, goes and rides next to Sirius, who throws mandarin slices at her and calls her Queen Lily. There’s something in that, she thinks, but is too angry to dwell on it much.

* * *

It’s late afternoon by the time they reach Giantville. She doesn’t know what she was expecting—what any of them were expecting—but the first giants they see are labouring in the fields.

The horses stagger back, even from afar. It’s all huge. The only thing that doesn’t make sense are the Kingdom’s flags flying, marking the land as Lamian. This used to be giants’ land, it should still be their land, it’s inside their borders.

Around the fields are boardwalks, structures to keep Lamian soldiers up high—soldiers, that she knows, suddenly, _ horribly_, are there on Ser Tom’s orders. Those in the fields are armed with barbed whips, and the ones along the bridges with crossbows.

She can’t watch for long, it makes her feel sick. She turns to James, instead, and his face—it’s thunderous, like when he was astride his horse in front of those ogres back in the forest.

They ride on.

James says nothing for the rest of the trip, brow furrowed, quietly furious.

The sky’s a bruise by the time they arrive at the Inn. It’s slightly wonky, but the windows are brightly lit, and she can feel the warmth coming out of the front door as she demounts.

“I didn’t know,” James says to her, as they hand their horses over to the stableboy in the darkening garden, the first words he’s said since they were back on the beach.

She just looks at him. His expression is pained. “I really didn’t know. I—I’m sorry. I’m going to be better.”

She smiles sadly. “This could be your chance to change things,” she tells him, looking at the pub.

“Let’s hope so,” he says, coming over to her side so they can walk in together. “Maybe you can find your Godmother here,” he says, lightly.

She nods, hadn’t really thought about it until now. What if she does find Lucinda inside? What then?

The warmth envelopes her as they get inside. It’s a wedding, she remembers. It’s very yellow, glowing, candles and fires burning along the walls. Everywhere, people are dancing, musicians in the corner.

She’s very small, here; everyone’s incredibly tall, a given and yet she’s still surprised, it’s hard to get used to.

“You should feel right at home here,” she hears Remus, who’s been taken out of her bag, say to Sirius.

“You’re making a tall joke, Lupin, really?” Sirius asks.

“Maybe this was a bad idea, Frell,” James whispers to her, lowly.

She turns to him and takes his wrist, suddenly, holding it, utterly shocked at her own courage. _Where did that come from? _She thinks of him, earnest, by the stables, insisting that he didn’t know, apologising to her like she was the one in that field.

“No,” she tells him. “They’ll respect your courage for showing up here.”

“Your Highness,” a low, grumbling voice, says. She looks up, her neck straining. It’s a giant, with dark eyes, ruddy cheeks and a thick, gristly beard. “What are you doing here?”

She sees James swallow, Adam’s apple poking out of his neck. Her fingers itch.

He draws himself up. She wonders how he can be so _ full _ and impressive despite being so small here. “Hagrid!” he says, smiling, suddenly. “I’m sorry to barge in. I—I’ve come as a friend. To hear your complaints.”

Hagrid smiles, eyes lighting up. “Well, then—welcome!” he says, arms spread wide.

“I—excuse me,” Lily starts. “I wondered if you could help me. I’m looking for someone: my Godmother, Lucinda.”

Hagrid beams at her. “She was over there earlier,” he tells her, pointing to a table, which, she sees, following his gaze, is populated largely by fairies. They’re mostly drunk, spread out across chairs, paper-thin wings, buzzing and translucent. 

“Thank you, so much!” she tells Hagrid, who tells her not to mention it. She turns to Sirius, takes Remus from his arms. “I’ll be right back,” she says to James. As she hurries away she hears him protest, “Frell!”, but she keeps moving, she’s so desperate to be free of this. She just wants to be free.

She runs over to the table, the nearest fairy looking up at her. Her eyes are a colour eyes have no right to be, gold and green like a beetle’s back.

“Um, excuse me,” Lily asks, “is Lucinda Perriweather here?”

She hiccups. “Nah,” she says. “She left about an hour ago.”

Lily feels herself flatten, disappointment rocking through her. _ Too late, she’s too late_. “Do you know where she went, where I could find her?” she asks, desperate.

The fairy shrugs. “Last I heard she was living somewhere in Lamia,” she says, and Lily nods.

“Thank you,” she tells her, and wanders away from the table, deflated.

“Remus,” Lily says. “Would you show me Lucinda, please?”

“Sure,” he says, and she prises him open. She can see her, on a road that looks to be in the middle of nowhere, walking sloppily.

“I think she’s drunk,” Lily says.

“Looks like it,” Remus tells her.

She sighs. “She could be anywhere,” she says, closing Remus. She looks around for Sirius, tries to spot him in the crowd. When she can’t, she heads back towards James.

“I truly had no idea,” she hears him telling Hagrid. “I’m so, so sorry. I promise you, the first thing after I’m crowned, I’ll help you buy your farms back.”

“You’re a good lad,” Hagrid tells him, patting him roughly on the back.

James turns, and his face lights up, happy to see her. She doesn’t know what to do with that, with him.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Lily says.

“Don’t be,” Hagrid says, smiling. “We were just getting done talking.” He turns to James, says, “Stick around, have a few drinks. On me.”

“Thank you,” James tells him, and as Hagrid shuffles off, looks at her. “What is it?”

“Have you seen Sirius?” she asks, dreadfully aware that this is somehow the end of something. His cheeks are pink in the glow of the Inn.

“Yeah,” he tells her, “he was just over there, why?”

“I—I have to leave,” she says, holding Remus to her chest. So much of her life has been this, leaving parties early before things can happen. “My Godmother isn’t here.”

“Oh,” he says, standing up, “oh.” He rubs the back of his neck, down to shirtsleeves in the warmth of the pub, rolled up to his elbows. There’s still a patch of dried blood, redness, like spilled wine, on his upper arm.

“Thank you for everything,” she tells him. She turns to go, but he stops her, reaching out an arm.

“Frell,” he tells her, “you can’t leave now, it’s the middle of the night.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, “I—”

“Stay,” he tells her, eyes very dark, and she thinks, _ oh _. She can’t go anywhere now, feels it deeply, like a kind of pleasurable tiredness, the same as being drunk. Struck happy.

“OK,” she tells him, “I guess I’ll stay.”

“No, I mean—_ fuck_,” he says, retracting his arm, rubbing a hand over his face. “That’s not what I meant.”

_ What did he mean? _ she wonders. _ What has any of this meant? _ He’s just told her to stay so she’s staying and she’s not particularly angry about it. Not scared of the fact that she’d let him tell her what to do, all of a sudden.

“I mean,” he says, actually touching her now, fingers brushing her arm, like he’s very aware that he’s doing it but unable to stop himself. He hesitates, and his hand falls. “I’d _ like _ you to stay. If that’s what you want. I don’t want—you can go, if you want.”

He keeps saying _ if you want_, enough to make her wonder if he knows, but no, he can’t know, he just cares, wants to make sure she’s doing things because she wants to. He’s decent, she realises, properly. He’s so, so decent.

“No,” she tells him, earnest, swaying towards him, “I—you’re right, it’d be stupid to go out on my own, now.”

“Alright,” he says, nodding, the gesture just seems to be because he can’t quite look at her, and that is funny to her, because he’s about to be crowned King and he can’t meet her eyes. “Alright, fine.”

* * *

They end up sitting together, next to the fire, backs against a bunch of sandbags much too large for them. “Where do you think she is?” he asks her, about Lucinda.

“I don’t know,” she tells him, honestly, because she doesn’t, she has no fucking idea, “she was meant to be _ here_. And I’ve got—” She pauses, looking at him. His eyes, whole face, actually, is expectant. He wants to hear all of what she has to say and because of that she finds herself floundering in the attention, like a dead fish. “I _ have _ to find her, I—”

And she considers telling him, then, the whole bloody thing, why she is who she is, why she’d do anything for him and not just because she’s cursed, that the book in her bag is a man, that she thinks she’s a terrible person because surely if she really, truly wanted to she could stop this then she could? Just turn it off? But she doesn’t say any of that, she just says what any normal girl would, a girl who doesn’t stop dead in the middle of roads to be rescued by handsome Princes. Like him.

“I don’t know,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear. “I just miss her.”

“Yeah,” he tells her, “I mean—yeah.”

There’s this pleasant moment where neither of them say anything, and then he turns to her, with a solution, of course he has one, he’s a man and he needs to fix things for her, “Did you think of trying the Hall of Records?”

“No,” she says, honestly, because she actually didn’t, never thought she’d be getting anywhere close to Lamia, to him.

“We, ah, we have every year’s census in the castle,” he tells her. “Probably not helpful to you at all,” he says, cheeky bugger.

“No!” she grabs him, unaware of the stipulations that surround her holding fast to his arm, his wrist, “That’s—oh my God, you’re brilliant!”

He smiles benignly, she didn’t think he would flounder under her appreciation of him the same way she does under his attention. But he snaps out of it, says, “Well, that’s settled, then? You’ll come with me, to Lamia, tomorrow?” He actually means today. It’s well past midnight. They should get some sleep.

“Yes,” she tells him, “yes, oh!” She holds onto her cheeks, the way she does when she’s happy, or sad, or excited. “Oh my God,” she whispers to herself, smiling, so happy to have somewhere to go, something proper to do, something that will most likely work, instead of wandering around a forest with a talking book and a grumpy elf.

“I mean, don’t go getting your hopes up,” he tells her, rocking into her, elbow to shoulder. “It’s not open to everyone, but I could probably pull a few strings.”

“I mean, of course,” she tells him, ridiculously, deliriously happy in his stupid, stupid company, “it’s not like you’re anyone important.”

“No,” he agrees, eyes all over her face, she can feel his gaze like a touch, “absolutely not.”

“I can’t tell you how much this means to me,” she tells him, very serious, “I—thank you.”

“S’alright,” he tells her, surprised at being thanked.

“No, I mean—for all of it. Thank you for bringing me here, thank you for everything you’ve done, thank you for saving us earlier.”

“Like you said,” he tells her, grinning hard enough to make her sick, resting his elbow on the sack behind them, fist against his cheek, “I barely did anything.”

“I never said that,” she tells him.

“No?” he says.

She shakes her head, just for something to do. He’s impossible.

“Hey, they don’t know you’re here, do they?” he asks her, suddenly, gently. “Your sister and parents.”

“She’s not my sister,” she tells him, a knee-jerk but faraway reaction.

“Sorry,” he says, immediate, “your step-sister, then.”

“No,” she tells him, something of a whisper. “They’ve probably noticed, though I can’t imagine they’d care.”

“That seems impossible,” he tells her, and he’s said it so quickly, has moved on so quickly that she barely has time to think about what he’s said. “You’re lucky, though. I wish I had brothers and sisters. My Mum passed away before she could have any more kids.”

She remembers seeing pictures of her, in books, his Mum, the Queen. She’d had the loveliest, most regal face; large brown eyes, dark skin, darker hair. High cheekbones set in a slender face.

“My Mother passed away, too,” she tells him. Then she smiles at something, she can’t remember quite what it is until it comes to her. “You know, she used to sing me to sleep every night?”

“My Dad used to sing to me,” he tells her, “loudly, and very off-key, but I still, y’know. Miss him.” He shrugs.

She feels stricken. At least she still has a Father. He has no parents, only an Uncle who treats his subjects like slaves, and yet he’s still one of the best people she’s ever met.

“I still had Uncle Tom,” he says. “He was never—he was never such a bad guy, to me. He risked his life to save my Dad, and then raised me when I had no-one else. I know you don’t like him much, but… y’know, when we get back tomorrow, the first thing I’m going to do is talk to him—about the Giants, the Elfin restrictions, all of it.”

He’s so vehement about it, charged. He’s trying to change things and wants her to know. She thinks, the same way that she’d do anything he asked, that he’d also do anything she wanted him to.

“I’m sorry,” she tells him, looking at the fire, not him. She can’t look at him even though it burns her eyes not to, all smoke and heat.

“What for?” he asks her. This seems to bemuse him, or she does, like she’s something he can’t wrap his head around.

“I really think—” Now she has to look at him, “I really do think you’re going to be a great king.”

His lips part, eyes widen. It undoes him a little bit, unmoors him from the anchor of himself, his reflexes and mannerisms.

She doesn’t feel anything else, being here. Sitting, he is still taller than her. Her hands on the sandbags feel tight.

“I’m sure your Father would’ve been proud. I’m sorry I underestimated you. You’ve got a good heart.”

Where is this coming from? Who is this Lily, who sits besides fires with princes and says exactly what she means?

“Thanks,” he says, lips barely forming the word, eyes on her face again, all over her face, the way she wants his hands to be.

He leans forward, a hairs’ breadth, and she can feel where the outside of her thigh is touching his knee.

“You have to kiss me now, you know,” he says, and she feels the promise of it shiver up her spine. It feels painful, to be this good.

“Yeah?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he whispers, and their noses touch. “And that’s not an order, by the way. I just want you to.”

“Here?” She can barely breathe. “In front of everyone?”

“Yes please. If you want.”

She didn’t think that kings asked politely for things. _ If you want_. And God, she wants to. She really does.

She parts her lips slightly before they touch his. Kisses him in front of the fire because he’s asked her to and because she wants to and because of everything else. She doesn’t need to cut him open to know he’s good right the way through. It’s just a hunch. And her hunches are usually right.


	3. Chapter 3

She sees the castle for the first time with him by her side, both of them astride their horses.

The whole time she’s looking at it, he’s looking at her, and she doesn’t even realise until she looks over, struck dumb, and he’s staring right back at her. Perched jauntily on the back of his horse, fiddling with the saddle stitching.

The fact that she is something special at all to him is truly baffling. She woke up with him draped half over her, snoring and heavy. Rigid. Sturdy. Someone trustworthy.

“Jesus _ fucking _ Christ, just when I thought you two couldn’t get any more annoying,” Sirius says, trotting past them on his ill-tempered stallion. “Hurry the fuck up, for _ fuck’s _ sake.”

He’s been in a bad mood since last night, she thinks he’s hungover.

“You can’t say things like that around me,” James reminds Sirius, spurring his horse after him. “I’m royalty.”

“_Really_?” Sirius asks. “God, I had no _ fucking _ idea. I’m so _ sorry, _ your _ Royal _ Highness, _ please _ forgive me, your _ Royal _ Highness.”

She follows them down the hill, happy to be there.

* * *

“I want to look twenty five at tonight’s ball,” the stepmother says to the beautician. “What do you suggest?”

Tonks, lying on the four-poster and not folding laundry, says, “A time machine?”

“May I recommend our newest procedure?” the beautician says, opening his case. “Bat feces and oxblood: batox.”

The stepmother makes a funny sound, half a choke, half a squeal. Tonks’s interest in this whole thing is suddenly piqued.

“Works _ wonders _,” the beautician assures the stepmother, coming over to stand behind her vanity. “Though, I must caution you. Some people have a temporarily bad reaction.”

The stepmother prods at her own face. Tonks, smiling, starts folding socks together at random when Lily’s father walks through the door.

“What are you doing here?” the stepmother asks, not entirely pleased to see him. Tonks panics; no-one’s told him that Lily’s missing.

“I’m in town on business and heard you were here. I came to see Lily,” he says. Tonks presses a knuckle to her upper lip. “Is she here?”

“Of course she’s here,” the stepmother snaps, “where else would she be? She’s—she’s with Petunia, taking a tour of the castle.”

It’s a good, sound lie, she’s really thought about this. Not enough to wonder where Lily is, or when she’s coming back, but just enough to lie to one of the few people left who actually cares about her.

Tonks is worried, too, still doesn’t know where Lily is. She just figures that if she’s been gone this long, longer than they planned, it’s because they haven’t found Lucinda yet. Tonks doesn’t want to think about the possibility that she might be gone, properly gone, or dead.

She misses her like a lost tooth, constantly reaching for that space between her gums, wishing for her laughter and happiness, one of the only good people she’s ever met. It’s at times like this that she wishes she could talk to Remus.

She gets up and throws a pair of mismatched socks behind her head, which hit the stepmother in the face.

* * *

Funny, Lily thinks, how they can just walk right in. Having this kind of power is dizzying, and she only has it because she’s with him.

They reach the west entrance to the palace—after walking through muddy streets, strewn with hay, packed with farm animals and peasants, _ like her _ , she had thought, _ like her _—and it’s open doors, James unthinking. She can’t imagine being this.

The second they step inside the gates, though, a guard steps in front of Sirius, a hand on his chest.

“Um, what the fuck?” Sirius says, swatting the hand away, trying to push past him.

The guard goes with him, moving again before Sirius can sidestep. “Are you performing at the coronation?”

“Fuck no,” Sirius says.

“He’s with us,” Lily says, but the guard seems not to hear her.

“No elves inside the palace unless they’re performing,” the guard tells Sirius.

“He’s with us,” James says, terribly calm and commanding, coming over. Funny how no-one heard her when she said it.

“No, y’know what? Forget it,” Sirius says, throwing his hands up. “Fuck _ you _,” he says, pointing to the guard. “I’m going to get something to drink,” he says, turning away.

“There’s plenty to drink inside,” James says, quietly.

“Nah.” He brushes off James’s invitation. “Have fun, your _ Highness _,” he says to James.

“Sirius—” Lily starts, moving forward.

“Just leave him,” James tells her, softly.

“It’s alright, Frell,” Sirius says, whirling, grinning at her as he walks backwards. “I’m sure His Highness will have plenty to show you inside the palace.”

She feels bitten by this. Instead she lets him go, lets James lead her inside.

The doors—massive, oaken—to the foyer open at their approach. She’s hit by the massive amount of light inside; tall tapestries lining the stone walls, exquisite carpeting on the floors.

It’s marred, slightly, by the fact that they walk right into Petunia. Petunia, and about fifty other girls.

Her stepsister’s face sours at the sight of her—flushed cheeks from travelling all day, suntanned, a little roughened, James’s hand on her shoulder. How she must look, Lily thinks, how she must look to her.

Her gut plummets, she hadn’t wanted this to happen. Why is Petunia even here? She wasn’t supposed to be, she was supposed to have time to get free. This is some kind of a chokehold, being here, suddenly, being seen by her. She backs up into James.

“What are you doing here?” they say at the same time. Lily’s is more of an outpouring, deliberate emotion and panic, where Petunia’s is stifled, stiff-upper-lip expression, ruffled.

It’s left there; the second the other girls assembled in the foyer see them, though, it’s uproarious, clambering to get to James, who, without preamble, says, “Sorry, ladies”, grabs Lily’s hand and marches straight through a side door, shutting it behind them.

“I don’t know what she’s doing here,” are Lily’s first words, despite being pressed up against a stone wall, James leaning on a side table in front of her, folding his hands over one another, knuckle to long finger and back again.

She looks down. He’s looking at her.

“I have—I _ have _ to find my Godmother, now, I’m sorry,” she says, desperately, like this is an ending. She wants desperately to live inside this world she’s created for herself, one where she rides around the countryside with a Prince who likes her, where she can pretend that she’s a girl who won’t do anything anyone asks her to do. “And—and Sirius, oh, _ Sirius _…”

“It’s fine,” he tells her, coming right up to her, pressing a knuckle against her cheek. She wasn’t crying, but she could now. She likes that he just touches her like this, she doesn’t even have to ask. “Frell, it’s really fine. I have guards in the city who will tell me where Sirius is, and we’ll go to the Hall of Records this afternoon.”

She nods.

“Lily,” he says, knocking a knee into hers, “it’s alright.”

She looks up at him, and he’s smiling at her. “Don’t forget, you are with the future King.”

She believes it, she believes it so much.

“James,” someone says, not her, and they turn to her left.

She stiffens.

“Hello, Uncle,” James says, pleasantly.

It’s Ser Tom. She goes a little wobbly, in a way that James absolutely doesn’t; he’s completely languid, smiling and freewheeling around this person who banishes ogres and enslaves giants and elves.

A part of her understands it, though, because, looking at him, he’s the right sort for it. Tall, almost black hair, eyes that she doesn’t like looking at her.

“Who is this charming young woman?” Tom asks, she realises he’s asking it of James about her, who doesn’t seem to see what’s she’s seeing.

“This is Lily, of Frell,” James says, and the second he does she wants him to take it back. The thought of Tom knowing who she is makes her feel like she’s been put in purgatory, the opposite of everything she’s felt since she met James. _ How is this his Uncle? _

“Lily,” James says, “this is my Uncle Tom.”

She curtseys even though she doesn’t want to. No-one has to tell her to; this is the sort of place where you have to do things without people asking you to. It’s the wrong place for someone like her.

“I trust your journey was pleasant,” Tom says.

She looks straight at him, then, wanting to say something like digging fingers into a wound. “We had a run-in with some ogres who had been banished to the forest, actually. And enslaved giants who were labouring in the fields.”

“You could’ve been killed,” Tom says. He put them there, the ogres and giants, he has no reason to care. Of course the kind of person who persecutes anyone who isn’t human doesn’t worry about them, it’s not like he didn’t know it was happening.

“James,” Tom says, turning to look at him. “Might I trouble you for a moment? The crown-maker needs to see you in your chambers, for a fitting.”

“Sure,” James says, “I just have to take Lily to the Hall of Records first.”

She looks up at James, then, the underside of his jaw.

“Of course,” Tom says.

She walks away with James, and has to force herself to look ahead the whole time, can feel Tom’s eyes on them like an itch.

* * *

James leaves her at the door of the Hall of Records, drapes himself against the doorframe.

“Bye,” he says, smiling at her, not moving.

“Get lost,” she tells him, shoving his good arm.

Inside, it’s gargantuan; shelves upon shelves of yellowing books stretching all the way up to the ceiling, skylights and tall windows letting in sheaths of sun that catch the dust.

She takes Remus out of her bag, props him up on the table and goes to locate the latest census.

Once she’s found it, she has to use both hands to get it off the shelf and onto the table, smacking up a waft of dust. She holds back a cough.

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Remus tells her, frowning.

“It’s OK,” she says, wafting a hand in front of her face, then hauls the book open. “Let’s just hope she’s in here.”

* * *

Slipping on a magnificent, heavy midnight-blue cloak in front of the mirror, James says to his uncle, “She’s got lots of good opinions about the kingdom.” ‘She’ means Lily. And she does. Every opinion is a right opinion when she says it. He thinks every word out of her mouth is gospel. “You should hear them.”

“I can’t wait,” Tom says. He can’t place his expression, somewhere between sour and sagely. He could just be tired, sick of him wittering on. It’s a lot, being King. James is about to know this.

“The giants’ working conditions, for example,” James quips, looking back at Tom. “We’ve seen them, and they’re—they’re diabolical. Luckily I’ve talked to them and they’re open to negotiation.”

“The only negotiations,” Tom says, silkily, standing up and walking over to the mirror, “between me and the giants will be over vegetable deliveries.”

Nagini slithers out from underneath James’s bed. _ That bloody snake. _

“This isn’t a joke,” James says, whirling to look at Tom, properly. He feels taller after getting back.

Tom smiles tightly. Even expressions that should be large on a normal person seem to take up barely a quarter of his face. His mouth quirks but his eyes stay the same. He reaches a hand out and places it on James’s shoulder, no weight in the gesture, but it feels like he’s trying to push him into the ground. “We’ll talk about it after your coronation,” he says, and James feels eleven years old.

“Fine,” he says. “But we will talk.”

“Of course,” Tom says, the limning smile returning. It barely means anything, James realises.

Tom turns, blithely, makes for the door. Before he can though, before it feels like he’s asking for anything, James tells him, looking at himself in the mirror, not Tom, “I’m going to ask her to marry me.”

That gets his uncle’s attention. He’s never rattled, not really, but he turns, almost abrupt, and narrows his eyes at James. On the ground, Nagini’s tongue flickers in and out, tasting the air.

“Who?” Tom says. “This—this Lily girl?”

_ Who else? _ James wants to say. _ Who else would there ever be for me? _

“Yes,” James says. There’s no dispute in the matter, he’s never been more sure of anything, not even the fact that one day he would succeed the throne. “Tonight. After the ball. In the garden, where Dad proposed to Mum.”

“How romantic,” Tom quips. James is just telling him, he’s not asking. Still, Tom doesn’t seem happy. He doesn’t seem much of anything.

* * *

“I can’t find her, anywhere, in any of these books,” Lily says, resting her chin in her hand, discouraged. Her eyes are hurting. Her cheeks feel hot, like she’s been in this room forever.

“Remus, show me Lucinda, please,” she says, opening him.

In the middle of the book she slumbers, stretched out across silken sheets. She’s been asleep, like this, every time Lily’s checked in over the past day.

She feels something tight in her chest. _ They might not find her _, she realises. They might not ever find her. What if she’s like this forever? What if she’s always the same? Doing things for people, always, with no way out, like a book she’s read a million times? Always the same story. People ask, she answers.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she says, pressing her hands to her face. She’s lost, if she can keep her eyes closed, see the black, for a moment she could be anywhere. Back home, before her Mum died, Tonks pinching her ear and the kettle whistling. She could be where she was this morning, James smiling at her sleepily as he woke, rubbing his eyes like a child, utterly unregretful about anything that had happened between them, like it couldn’t’ve been any other way and he wouldn’t’ve changed it even if he could.

When spots begin to appear behind her eyelids she lets her hands go, refocuses on the page, sick of seeing Lucinda’s sleeping body. Next to her on the nightstand, though, is a flyer, so easily missed. The second Lily sees it she grabs a magnifying glass, hovers it over the image.

“Remus,” she says, softly. “‘Dun Flyin’ Retirement Community for Faeries’.”

“Good name,” he remarks.

She incited by this, returning to the census. It’s darkening in the room, sun passing. She scours the pages with a finger.

Then she finds the name.

“Lucinda Perriweather, Dun Flyin’ Retirement Community for Faeries, in Lamia Heights! Remus,” she says, reaching desperately for him, “Remus, we’ve got her!”

She feels feverish, eyes watering from the dust and being here so long in the darkening room, candlelight flickering. She wants to cry.

She barely hears the door open, is so ebullient and full of excitement. She realises, now, that there was a part of her that never properly expected them to find Lucinda, never expected this to be real.

“Hello, Lily,” a voice says, and it’s like all the light in the room has been extinguished, terribly dark and cold.

She looks up to see Ser Tom standing, languid, in the doorway, gazing at her with narrowed eyes.

“Hello,” she says, standing and curtseying, polite.

“I trust,” he says, gliding over to her, one hand in a pocket, the other lazily swaying at his side, “that you’re finding everything to your satisfaction.”

She smiles, hiding a frown. It sounds like a ploy, as though he’s pretending that he doesn’t know that this is more than she’s been offered in her whole life.

“Of course,” she tells him.

“Good,” he says, going to perch on the edge of the table, she thinks, but his hip catches a careening book and sends it tumbling to the floor.

“Oh, dear,” he comments, vaguely, looking down. “Aren’t I clumsy.”

She gives him another fuzzy smile, he looks up, tilts his head slightly. There’s some limning degree of hostility and danger in his expression, she thinks, enough to captivate and control.

“Pick it up for me, Lily. Now.”

Her smile falters. The words and the way he says them—she actually _ was _ going to pick it up, funnily enough, but the command is like he’s grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked, hard.

Wilting as she bends over, hands on the spine of the book, she considers staying there, crawling away, like a child. She wants for James, like a child. She feels powerless, like a child.

A snake—the snake, Tom’s snake, James had told her about this—glimmers on the floor, slithering towards Lily. She breathes through her mouth.

Straightening, a weighty, immovable dread settling over her, an impossible knowing. She stands up, places the book back on the table. Her hand shakes.

“Thank you,” Tom says, the words at odds with his expression. She can’t explain the wrongness of him, the way it’s so easily mistaken for awe.

He looks at the books scattered across the table. “You’ve made a mess of things, haven’t you?”

This cows her, makes her feel embarrassed. He glances at her, that same, dangerous smile on his mouth. “Clean it up,” he tells her, “now.”

Her reaction is immediate, perfunctory. She sets to tidying, closing books, hiding Remus at the bottom of a pile.

“Now,” he says, surveying her, “I seem to have trodden in a spot of mud.” He fishes a handkerchief from his coat, gives it to her. “Clean it off my shoes.”

“Excuse me?” she says, before she goes down. He told her to do it now, she’s powerless to stop it, but she wants to make it look like she’s going to at least protest.

He doesn’t even have to say anything, just gazes down at her, chin lifted, smiling terribly. Her knees buckle.

The stone is hard against her shins, once she’s on the ground. She begins to work at the specs of dried mud on his exquisite leather shoes. He never said she had to finish the job, she throws down the handkerchief and stands, eyes blazing.

Tom stares back at her.

She feels like a shock victim, like she can’t even look too closely at what’s happening to her or she will start to cry. It’s one of the worst things that’s ever happened to her and she knows this, in some far-off way, but in the moment she’s thinking, _ it’s fine, I’m fine, he’s just asked me to clean his shoes. _

“Is that all?” she demands of him.

“Not quite,” Tom says. The smile—it’s psychopathic, now, no-one should be smiling at this.

“As you know,” he says, taking a turn around the room, “tonight is the Coronation Ball.”

She moves closer to the chair. Her hand hovers by her bag on the back of it, over the strap.

“At some point,” he says, glancing at her with those cold, cold eyes, “James is going to take you away to the Hall of Mirrors.”

It’s feels like he’s reading her something she already knows, something she doesn’t want to hear.

“And just before midnight,” Tom says, halting on the other side of the table, splaying his fingers of his right hand out on the smoothened oak, “he will take you by the hand, and ask you a question.”

She slides a hand under her bag strap. Tom notices.

“Put that down, now,” he tells her.

She does. And picks it up again, slings it over her shoulder. He’s testing her, she realises, he wants to know what her limits are, how far he can push her. She should be playing this game more carefully, but she doesn’t care. She just doesn’t care, she wants to get out of here.

Chin jutted out, stubborn, she makes a move for the door. She doesn’t have to do what he says if she can’t hear him.

“Stop,” Tom tells her, softly. “Turn around.”

She does, has to, feet in ice, like mud’s sucking at her shoes, her whole body.

He shakes his head, almost smiling, like she’s wretched, awful, ridiculous. She feels that way, but she’s done nothing wrong.

“Silly girl,” he says. “Now, don’t move, speak or make a noise until I tell you to.”

She wants to cry out, but she can feel that that comes under moving, or maybe speaking. _ What is he going to do to her? What is he going to make her do? _

This is what she’s always feared. The bag, not a part of her, swings on her shoulder. She could be marble, calcified and hardened like a sad-faced statue.

Tom moves towards her.

And then he takes a dagger out from within his coat. Sharp-edged, silvery, golden-hilted. Deadly. Beautiful.

“At the stroke of midnight, tonight, you will take this dagger, and plunge it through James’s heart. And kill him.”

She could almost laugh, the absurdity of this whole thing catching up with her. He’s just told her to kill James. It’s like telling her to bring someone back from the dead. She’s more likely to do that than do this.

But, she realises, horribly, she does actually have to do this. Because he’s just told her to.

She wants to shake her head, scream, say no, but she can’t. Tom, smiling horribly, says, “But first, I think it’s time I set down some boundaries.”

What a life she leads. How ridiculous this is.

“You’re aren’t to tell anyone about this. You aren’t to write it down, communicate it in any way. Once you’ve stabbed James, you aren’t allowed to call for help, or try to keep him alive. You aren’t allowed to try to rid yourself of the dagger, or ask anyone to kill James for you.”

_ Like she would _, she wants to say.

“You also cannot try to harm or kill yourself to stop yourself from killing him.”

She would, she would do that.

“You can speak, now,” he tells her. “You may go.”

She almost stumbles over her own feet and cloak in her haste to get to the door, wrenches it open and leaves.

* * *

She makes it to Dun Flyin’ by herself, seems to be in some kind of stupor, despite women hanging washing from tall windows, chickens scurrying underfoot, people chatting animatedly in the street.

She doesn’t know what else to do, a desperation so complete and focused, the only thing driving her. She can’t even kill herself to stop herself from what she’s been ordered to do.

She hammers on the oaken door, waiting for a response. A fairy smoking a joint answers, looking bored.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“Hi, I’m looking for Lucinda Perriweather. It’s urgent.”

The fairy shrugs. “She was kicked out last week. Sorry.”

Lily shifts from foot to foot, anxious, tears gathering in the back of her throat. “Do you know where I could find her, perhaps?”

“Nah,” the fairy says, clearly done with her, with more carelessness than Lily can handle right now.

“You don’t understand,” Lily says, almost screaming at her, this insufferable woman, in the middle of a crowded street, because she doesn’t understand, she _ doesn’t _ . “If I can’t find her by tonight something—” She chokes on what she’s about to say, like coughing up blood. “Something _ terrible _ is going to happen.”

“Finding her,” the fairy assures her, “_ would _ be something terrible.” She goes inside, closes the door.

There’s a complete loss at play inside Lily, a hopelessness she hasn’t felt since her Mum died. She was powerless to stop that, she’s powerless to stop this.

She stands in the middle of the street, trying not to cry. Eventually she starts to move, feels buffeted by everything, nothing in her control. She wanders, aimless, into a smoky pub, full even in the late afternoon, sits down at an empty table.

If she could wait until midnight, then there’d be no reason to kill James.

If she can make it until then she can go back to him. She’ll miss the ball, but it’ll be like she was never gone. But now that Tom knows—knows everything, there’s not very much to stop him from getting her to kill him a thousand times in her mind. Staying away from James is bad enough without knowing that she’ll kill him if she doesn’t.

So instead she drafts a letter—can only draft it, if she looks at it for too long she doesn’t know what she’ll do, might never send it.

She sits by the fire in the pub and cries, very different to the way she was last night. So much has happened, she feels she’s lived several different versions of this in her head.

She could keep looking for Lucinda, but James will never be safe while she’s around. She’s never thought of herself like that before, a liability to the people she loves. She’ll have to go home. She doesn’t know if she can face Petunia. Maybe she’ll stay on the run forever, keep looking for Lucinda. Sirius could tag along if he wanted to, it might not be so bad. She might never see her Dad or Tonks again, but it’d be worth it. A small death by comparison.

* * *

_ James, _

_ I’m sorry to do it like this, but I don’t see another way. You might hate me for a while but that’s OK. You’ll be better off without me, I hope you’ll see that. _

_ There’s something not right with me, something I can’t explain and can’t fix yet. Until I do I think it’s best we don’t see each other again. _

_ It’s terrible, because I actually quite like you. A bit. You’ve thoroughly surprised me and I hope you know that. You’re incredibly good, and kind, and chivalrous. _

_ I’m sorry to do this to you, but it’s for the best, it really is. _

_ Hopefully one day I can see you again. _

_ I really do think you’re going to be a great King, the best one we’ve ever seen. _

_ My love, and hope, and goodwill, _

_ Lily. _

* * *

She leaves it at that, can’t say very much more.

She seals the letter, drops it back at the palace gates. It might not even reach him, but she hopes that it will.

Afterwards, she can’t really stop herself from sniffling around the streets, it just sort of happens. She’s been like this before, would wander the lanes late at night after her Mum died, crying and looking at people’s gardens, pretending that she was someone else, someone with rosebushes out the front of her house and a little white fence. Someone with a Mother.

She plans to head out of town, as far as she can get, has never really tested the curse like this, before.

It’s outside another pub, nearer to the outskirts of town, that she finds Sirius, a bit pissed, petting a goat.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he asks, as she sits down beside him.

She shrugs. “Who’s your friend?” She gestures to the goat.

Sirius, hand stilling on its head, frowns a little bit, looking at its yellow eyes. “Dunno. Clementine? Dandelion? Something stupid.”

She tucks her knees up into herself, sniffling as she sits there.

“What’s the matter?” Sirius asks. “You and hot-shot have a lovers quarrel?”

She laughs a bit, cutting it fine between a cry and a sob, wiping her left eye with the back of her hand. “Not quite.”

“You sure you’re alright?” he asks, properly concerned now, in a way she hasn’t seen him be before, tilting his head, eyes genuine and searching.

“Yeah, I’m good,” she says, sighing. “Now,” she turns to him, “this may sound a little strange, but there’s something I need you to do for me.”

He raises an eyebrow.

* * *

Several miles out of town, nearer to the forest, a good hour’s walk, Sirius finishes shackling her to a tree.

“You are one kinky chick,” he says, tucking the key into his pocket.

She rolls her eyes, struggling against the chains. She can’t budge, it’s good. “Now, I need you to go back into the forest and rally all the giants and elves you can find.”

“No fucking way,” he says.

“You’re going to need all the help you can get,” she insists.

“What if I don’t want to?” he asks.

“Tough,” she says. “Now, someone has to get back into the castle, find Remus and then _ keep James way from Tom _.”

“Why? What the fuck is going on?” he asks her.

“I already _ told _ you, I can’t say,” she says, pitiful. “But if you don’t you’ll probably be forced to sing show tunes for the rest of your life.”

“Fine,” he says, scowling, and sets off towards the trees. “Into the forest of certain death I go.”

“Thank you,” she tells him.

“Yeah, whatever, Frell,” he says.

* * *

He gets her letter. He’s never been so childishly angry, wanting to stand in front of her and say, _ why, why, why _. He doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get her. Instead, he sits grumpily in his throne at the ball, refusing to accept what she’s said and looking around stupidly for her anyway.

“Where’s your friend?” Tom asks, lowly, at his shoulder. “Shouldn’t she be here?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he says, shoving off the raised plinth, going to look at the food. All this, for him, and all he wants to do is leave, go find her. He feels utterly selfish because of it, overtaken by the anger. A put-out, bad mood, sulky. He’s no good without her.

* * *

She_ feels _ it when it strikes 11, pulls at the chains with a strength she didn’t know she had. There’s a terrible itching inside of her, like if she doesn’t get back to the palace and kill the boy she desperately likes she might tear herself up inside.

_ No _ , she thinks. _ No, no, no _ . She’s never actually tried to stop herself from doing something like this, and it’s strange, to feel that _ not _ killing him goes so vehemently against something inside her.

A chill bites at her bare arms and she shivers, unable to adjust her cloak. Crickets are abundant around her, chirping audibly like the clicking of fingers. Wind rustles the endless grass, sky relatively clear above her.

She keeps an eye on the treeline, waiting for Sirius.

The stars flourish, one shooting across the sky. At least, she thinks so until it eclipses like a supernova, building into a rolling collection of purple clouds. She’s not quite sure what she’s looking at until someone drops from the sky.

“Hello?” Lily shouts. “Are you OK?”

The figure—it’s got to be a fairy, only they can do that—stumbles upright, coming down the hill towards her.

She seems drunk, shiny, dark skin luminescent. She doesn’t have wings, but her curly hair is arranged on her head like the top of a cake.

Lily starts. The fairy is about to shoot back up into the sky, arms raised, when Lily screams.

“Lucinda! Lucinda! Oh, my God!”

She’s never been so excited. She might not have to kill James. She might not have to ask Sirius to kill her to stop her from killing James. She might be able to normal, a non-killing sort of person.

Lucinda notices her, then, turning around, walking unsteadily over to her.

Lily is almost crying from happiness.

“Good lord,” Lucinda says, stopping a few feet away from Lily, surveying her with hands on hips, “do I know you, child?”

“I’m Lily, of Frell,” she says, her voice shaking. “You gave me a gift.” It seems so silly, now, so trivial.

Recognition lights up Lucinda’s face, changes her whole expression. “Oh!” she says, smiling. “Yes, I remember you. The obedient one.” She says it in a way that suggests that it’s a normal thing to be, not something that could make Lily kill someone tonight.

Lily, struggling a little bit, breathes, “I am _ so _ happy to see you, I’ve been looking _ everywhere _ for you.” She’s desperate to get this out. This could be it, she just has to tell her fast enough. “I need you to take the gift back,” Lily tells her, almost without thinking.

Lucinda’s face changes again. “Take it back?” she repeats, amused. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

She’s about to turn away when Lily says, despairing, “It’s not that I’m not grateful for it, I really, truly am!” She isn’t. She really isn’t. “But, because of it, I—I might be about to do something to someone who I—love.” It comes out the way you trip over uneven ground, she couldn’t help it. 

“You’re out of your mind,” Lucinda tells her, and Lily thinks that maybe she is until she realises that’s not what she’s talking about. “Everybody loves my gifts.”

Lily realises, then and there, that that’s it. Lucinda’s never going to take it back, she never was.

“_Please_!” she screams, as Lucinda turns to go. She’s starting to cry now. Her Mum dying, the curse, James shoving her out of the way of a moving carriage, Petunia’s eyes glinting as she tells her to steal a pair of slippers entirely too nice for her, Sirius coughing up blood in the forest, Tonks stroking Remus’s spine before Lily slipped out of the house with him in the dead of night. Tom, standing in front of her, telling her to kill his nephew like he was discussing the weather. It’s all too much.

“Lucinda, Lucinda,” Lily says, sobbing, once she’s turned around. “I’m _ begging _ you,” Lily implores her, she’d get down on her hands and knees if she had to, but she can’t, she’s gotten her best friend to chain her to a tree so she doesn’t kill the Prince.

“I’ll do _ anything, anything _ you ask,” Lily tells her, and she means it, she really does. “Please, _ take it back._”

“You don’t like my gift?” Lucinda says, angry now, bright pink in the middle of the night and this field. “_Fine._ Get rid of it yourself.”

“I’ve _ tried_,” Lily sobs. “I’ve tried, I’m so, so sorry—”

“Don’t blame me for your problems,” Lucinda tells her, and it jolts Lily, because she’s right. This really isn’t her problem. She’s not going to help her, Lily knows that now, but she won’t stop until she’s ridden this out, until there’s nothing left for her, she’d ruin herself if she knew she hadn’t tried everything, exhausted every avenue. She blames herself for her Mum dying because maybe there was something she could’ve done. That won’t happen again, she’s sworn it.

“Did I chain you up to this tree? Did I leave you in the middle of this field?” Lucinda asks. Lily realises, then, how stupid this must look to her, a sobbing girl, alone, tied to a tree.

“But—” Lily starts, and Lucinda cuts her off.

“In fact,” Lucinda says, regarding Lily, thoughtfully, “just to prove what a gem _ I _ am? I’ll unchain you.”

“What?” Lily says, horrified. “No! No, don’t!”

Lucinda snaps her fingers. The chains slide off her, rattling as they fall to the ground, and Lily can’t believe it. She scratches her fingers into the bark. There’s nothing to keep her here.

“Look at you,” Lucinda says. “A pretty girl like you, you should be at the ball.”

“_No,_” Lily almost screeches. “No, you don’t understand, I _ can’t_—”

“Go talk to the Prince,” Lucinda suggests. Lily almost laughs, she’d do more than talk to him. She’d kiss him, she’d kill him.

“_I can’t go_.” Lily shakes her head.

“Well,” Lucinda says thoughtfully, looks her over. “Not dressed like that, you can’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not sure if this is like. relevant to anyone but my tumblr got terminated because of all the porn i post and i'm trying to get it back but if you follow me there and want to know why everything's gone then. that's why i didn't delete it myself this time i promise


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so here it is, the final part. thanks to everyone who's stuck with it (and me, even though i only post like, twice a year), kudos-ed and commented, you're all the best. also sorry if there are spelling errors because i could not be fucked to edit this properly. i love you all more than i love hugh dancy in tight leather trousers

It’s a beautiful, gauzy, stupid thing—like a blue dawn, a vein in her wrist. It does nothing for her, though, because all she’s worried about is James, as she walks through the chilly, stone-walled corridors, James and the matter of her killing him.

She’s worried the dagger in her pocket will tear the fabric of the dress. She’s worried it’ll tear through the chest and bone and sinew and heart of a stupid, valiant boy like him.

Lucinda had dressed her like you would a present or a cake, and in a click Lily had found herself outside the gates in the dark garden, lanterns illuminating the path because anyone is allowed to be here, now. Killers and girls. Girls and killers.

She feels herself compelled through the castle, except it’s not just the spell, it’s _ her_, because even when she can’t see him she desperately wants to.

Everywhere is cold and hollow until she’s propelled into the ballroom.

It’s dark but beautifully illuminated, something deadly about this night. Everyone is dressed in jewelled tones, food on the table glazed and glistening. She cannot think of eating. The sight of so much food, so many dead things, makes her feel sick.

She catches sight of James in the centre of the room. He’s like an axis for her, for everything, being an almost King. It makes sense to her that everything revolves around him. He’s it for her.

He looks sullen, and bored, until he sees her, and the look he gives her makes her knees buckle like she isn’t going to stab him in less than an hour. She finds it hard to imagine, her affecting someone so much.

He is, sort of, the sun, she realises, feeling herself pulled towards him, inevitable. He moves the same way, like she’s the only thing in the room for him.

“Hey,” he says, casually. “Thought you’d gone.”

He got the letter, then, she gathers. His eyebrows bunch together and she can see that he’s angry with her for coming and being late and breaking his heart, all the usual things.

He looks unfairly handsome in a velvet waistcoat. “Yeah,” she tells him. “Figured it’d be rude of me to miss this.”

“Yeah,” he says. She feels stripped bare in front of him, surprisingly chilly. “It sure would.”

Then he takes her hand and pulls her to him and into a dance. He swallows and it’s a very noticeable thing, the effect she has on him.

“James,” she says, aware of the bright lights and everyone looking at him, and him staring down at her like he could never really be angry with her for more than a second. “You have to get rid of me.”

His hand holds her waist, thumb brushing against her hipbone and pausing over the hollow near her stomach. “Why would I want to do that?”

“You’ve got to,” she tells him. She doesn’t want to cry in the middle of this room. Petunia’s probably here, too, that’d be embarrassing. Lily’s probably going to do something like tell James she loves him, that’d be even more embarrassing. How silly is all of this, how stupid a girl is she?

“Frell,” he asks her, “what’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she lies, knowing hopelessly how she feels about him. “You just have to tell me you never want to see me again. You have to tell me to leave. Please.”

He shakes his head, bows forward so that his mouth is near her ear. She can’t see his face, but can feel it when his body shakes. “You’re killing me, Frell,” he tells her, and she almost laughs, because she is actually going to kill him tonight.

He straightens up, one hand coming up to cradle the side of her face, palm large enough that his fingers splay out over the side of her neck. He holds her like that, preciously, and it makes her want to cry again.

She makes herself look at him, like pulling teeth.

“I’m wrong for you,” she pleas, shaking her head, “I’m wrong for you, I’m wrong for the kingdom—”

“Lily.” He takes her face in both hands now, eyes desperately searching hers because he wants her to know that he’s serious. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

She keeps shaking her head, like she can rid it of all the bad thoughts and things Tom has told her to do.

“Oh my God,” he says, wrapping an arm around her waist, pressing his forehead against hers. “You know how crazy that is, don’t you? You have no idea how wrong you are.”

She’s really going to have to kill him.

_ Your Uncle killed your Father, _ she wants to tell him. _ He killed your Father and then he told me to kill you and I think I’m going to. I love you and that can’t stop me. It didn’t stop my Mum from dying, it won’t stop me from killing you. _

James steps back from her, smiles, like all is forgiven, he’s like a labrador. “Come with me, Frell,” he says, taking her hand, and she does, she’d follow him anywhere.

_ He’s so good, _ she realises. He’s the best kind of person and she’s going to kill him.

He takes her out of the ballroom through a side door, down several hidden corridors, cold and dark and blue except it’s fine because she’s with him. He turns around in the light from a window and walks backwards for a moment, smiling at her.

They pass a grandfather clock on the way. It’s a quarter to midnight. She pauses in front of it, stricken, and he tugs at her hand, childlike. “Come on, Frell,” he tells her.

This could be happening to someone else, not her. This is just a story being told to her.

They circle around corners, small alcoves and spiral staircases. They’re in the guts of this castle.

Eventually, glancing back one last time to smile at her, he’s so excited to show her this, like a child on Christmas morning, he pushes on a hidden door, leads her into what can only be the Hall of Mirrors.

Every surface except the floor is reflective, beautiful and silver like the face of a lake.

Ivy clings to the walls, runs onto the floor like fingers, dead leaves covering the stone floor. This place is sacrosanct, she’s about to sin here.

She feels gutted open from the inside, sick.

“I used to sneak in here all the time as a kid,” he tells her. “One time Dad found me, told me to look in the mirror and see myself as a great leader.” He scratches behind his ear, grins at her, earnest.

“And then, I mean—where did you even come from, Frell? How did you even happen to me?” He thinks she’s wonderful and she doesn’t know what to do with it, this kind of love.

She breaks down, then. This is it for her. She loves him and she’s going to kill him and he thinks she’s so great.

He lunges for her, sure he’s done something wrong, but that just makes it worse. He brushes the hair back from her face. “Frell, Frell, what’s wrong? Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” he says, crushing her to his chest.

She sobs. “I can’t tell you, I can’t, I—James, James, you have to let me go. You have to send me away.” _ Please, _ please _ send me away. _

“Frell, you know I won’t do that.”

“_Please, please, please _—”

“But, Frell,” he says, cupping her cheek, and she looks up at him. He doesn’t understand, would never believe anything bad of her. She hates him for it. “It’s been so good, these past few days.”

“You don’t understand,” she tells him, almost collapses in his arms. She’s so angry with him for letting her do this. “You don’t understand.”

She bows out and away from him, feeling the dagger in her pocket.

“Well,” he says, and runs a hand over the back of his neck, “I mean, the letter threw me a bit, if I’m honest. You kind of broke my heart, you know that?”

She cries, dragging a hand across her face.

“I don’t—” she gasps, “I’m _ sorry_—”

“Don’t be,” he says, reaching for her, “I don’t care, Frell, I don’t care about any of it. I mean,” he says, shrugging benignly, he’s nervous, she realises. God, to be normal and just enjoy this. If only she was normal. “I kind of like you, too, a bit, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

She laughs, still crying. She’s got a knife in her pocket that she’s about to use to stab him and she doesn’t know how to stop herself. She’s never known how to stop herself, around him, but this is something different.

“_Fuck _,” he swears, “I’m doing this all wrong, I know—”

“James,” she says.

He looks at her, for one long moment.

And then he gets down on one knee.

She’s never wanted anything less and more. _ Oh _, she thinks. Of course it was always going to come to this. She feels young and stupid and sure, the way kids get, it couldn’t’ve been any other way. The sky is blue, she would marry James if he asked. Her Mum is dead, she would marry James if he asked.

“Frell,” he says, painfully honest and vulnerable, like he expects her to say no, because he doesn’t seem to know how gone she is for him. “Will you marry me?”

The stupid thing is, she’s about to say yes. She’s never wanted to say yes so badly. He’s a stupid, sure thing and she’d bet her life on him. She’s not got a life to give, though. Her life is forfeit.

The clock strikes twelve.

“_No,_” she says, dropping like she’s been deadheaded, sobbing on the ground. He makes a grab for her. They’re both on the ground now. They’re both in the dirt. One of them’s got to die, she wants it to be her. “_No, no, no, no, no, please, please, please_.”

“Lily?” he asks her, a hand rubbing circles on her back. “What is it?”

“_No, no, no, no, no, I can’t, I _ can’t—” she repeats, crying, fists on the ground. One shakes as she feels it guided to her pocket, like she’s done this before and will do it again. She grabs the knife and drags it behind her, like brushing a bloody wound. She can’t look at him. She doesn’t want to do this. She wants it to be over. “ _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._”

“Frell,” he says, dragging her upright, because he’s forgotten all about the proposal, now, of course he has. She’s crying and he wants to make things better for her. “Frell, tell me what’s wrong, what’s wrong?”

She falls into his chest, weeping, and she tells him, “I do love you, James,” and he holds her to him, breathing heavily. She holds the knife behind her back. He’s so good but so stupid, he shouldn’t think the world of her because she’s a terrible, terrible person.

Her hand clenches around the hilt of the knife, she brings it up behind his back. She can see herself doing this, a million times over in the mirrors. Maybe one of those girls has a Mother who’s still alive. One of them is bound to not be cursed.

In her head, her Mother dies a million times, Petunia figures it out, Mary keeps turning away at the door. An ogre raises a club and Sirius continues to step in front of her. Tonks shoves Remus into her hands. Tom tells her, over and over, to kill James and not tell anyone about it.

She weeps, hard enough to break all of her ribs, seeing her shaking fist holding the knife. Her Mother keeps dying and the bed stays unmade after they take her body away. The windows stay open, she shivers the whole night because she can’t leave the last place her Mother’s body was.

She should be stronger than this, she thinks, did her Mum die for nothing? She refuses to do things and does them anyway. She thought she was better than this. She was supposed to be better than this.

She locks eyes with herself in the mirror, red-cheeked, crying girl, eyes horrified behind James’s back. She watches her hand like it doesn’t belong to her. Her Mother keeps dying, Petunia keeps figuring it out, Mary walks away, Tonks tells her to go. The club swings, Sirius steps in front of her. Tom tells her to kill James. James tells her to marry him and this keeps happening. _Kill him. _

She’s full of questions. _What was the point of all this?_ _Did her Mum die for nothing? Did Tom say that she couldn’t override his original request, kill-switch herself? Has anyone ever said that? Has she been kidding herself her whole life?_

“You—” And she looks at herself looking at herself looking at herself. One of these girls will listen to her. “You will no longer be obedient. _ You will no longer be obedient._”

If it happens in the mirror it happens to her. The tap loosens, water rushing out of the faucet, cold and shocking.

She drops the knife.

She falls out of James’s arms and onto the cold, cold floor. _ Is that it? Is she done? _

“Am I free?” she whispers, hands palm-down on the stone.

James looks down at her, stricken, rubbing at his chest. He looks behind him, at the knife, which had clattered on the stone like a gold coin. “Lily?” he asks.

She glances up at him. He’s looking at her like he’s not quite sure who she is, what she’s doing, what she’s just done.

Her eyes widen. _ Oh, this _, she thinks. Tom knew before she did. Even if she didn’t kill him she’d get very close to doing so. The worse part wasn’t even the stabbing, or the near-stabbing, it’s the after. It’s how James is watching her now.

“James—” she says, crawling towards him along the floor, “James—”

The doors crash open, on both sides of the room, mirrors sliding upon mirrors.

Guards swarm the room like bees, armour clattering, and James blows out a breath, chest caving, sinking down onto the floor.

“James, no, _ James_!” Two guards grab her by the upper arms. She feels herself sliding along the floor, and she starts to scream. “James, wait, James! _ James_!”

They drag her upright, force her through the open doorway.

She casts a last, desperate glance over her shoulder. The last thing she sees is James kneeling in the corner of the room, head in his hands, and Tom, standing there, eyes glinting.

* * *

They throw her in gaol. She never thought she’d be bad enough to end up here. She feels cold, still wearing the dress, which is, to say, wearing nothing much at all.

It feels like there’s nothing in her, emptied out like she’s been upturned.

She clings onto the bars of her cell. “Please,” she begs, looking, probably, every bit exhausted as she feels. Ragged girl, pretty dress, face blotched from crying like she’s been hit repeatedly. “Please, you don’t understand, you have to tell the Prince—”

The gaoler—a fat, ruddy-cheeked man—ignores her, walking away. He thinks she’s guilty, she realises. They all think she’s guilty. She’s no better than anyone else.

She collapses against the wall.

She might die now, but at least James isn’t. She might die now, but at least she’s free.

* * *

“Jesus _ fucking _ Christ,” Sirius says, leaning against a bin in the alleyway, peeling a banana. “It’s not that _ fucking _ hard. All you have to do is find a way to get past those guards.”

“Yeah, sorry? Seems pretty _ fucking _ hard, if you ask me, dipshit.” Tonks sticks her chin out at him.

“Whatever.” Sirius, rolling his eyes, opens the bin to throw away the banana peel.

“This is recycling only,” Remus tells him, blinking against the light.

“Oi, oi,” Sirius says, lifting Remus out of the bin and throwing the banana peel in there, anyway. “What the fuck were you doing in there?”

“Look, that doesn’t matter right now,” Remus tells him, clearly biting back something funny, “Lily’s in real trouble.”

“What d’you mean?” Sirius asks, holding Remus with one hand and taking a bite of the banana in the other.

“Remus?” Tonks asks, ambling over. “What were you doing in there?”

“Hi,” Remus says, weakly, as Tonks picks a banana string off him. “What are you doing here?”

“Stepmother’s in town for the ball,” Tonks explains. “Dragged me with her. Anyway, I skipped out and went for a drink when I found this one in the pub.” She tugs at Sirius’s ear. He slaps her hand away.

“Are you guys going to be long?” Mary asks, sitting on top of a barrel. “I’d quite like to get things moving here, if that’s not _ too _ much trouble.”

“Mate, who’s that?” Remus asks Sirius, who hands him to Tonks. She pokes at the front cover affectionately.

“Lily’s mate Mary. Ran into her while I was gathering people in the forest.”

“Why was she in the forest?”

Sirius shrugs. “Looking for Lily, apparently. Said they had a falling out.”

“Woah, what the fuck,” Mary says, coming over to them now, staring at Remus.

“Look, we really don’t have time for this,” he says. “Sirius, did you know about Lily?”

“Did I know what?” Sirius asks, taking another bite of banana.

“She’s cursed,” Remus says.

“Woah, what?” Mary says.

“Technically it’s a spell,” Tonks points out.

“What d’you mean, cursed?” Sirius asks Remus at the same time Remus asks Tonks, “You _ knew _?”

“Her Mum made me promise I’d never tell,” Tonks says quietly, mortified. Remus wishes, not for the first or last time, that he could touch her.

“Basically,” he says, “she does whatever she’s told.”

“I could’ve told you that for free,” Sirius scoffs.

Remus, thoroughly annoyed, says, “No, I mean, like, she _ has _ to do things. She’s got no choice.”

“Jesus,” Sirius says, while Mary, fingering a piece of her hair, says, softly, “Oh.”

“Anyway,” Remus continues, “we were in the Hall of Records when Tom came in—”

“Wait, _ Ser _ Tom?” Sirius interrupts, with his mouth full. He swallows. “As in, like, the guy who’s running the kingdom?”

“He found out about the curse, somehow. He’s got her involved in a ploy to kill James. I think it was meant to happen last night. Anyway, I don’t know where she is now, but we’ve got to find her.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sirius says, polishing off the banana before snatching Remus out of Tonks’s arms. “Show me where she is,” he says, flipping Remus open.

* * *

“Open the _ fuck _ up!” Sirius yells, hammering on the door of the gaol. “I know the fucking Miranda rights!”

The gaoler opens the door just a sliver, eyes narrowed. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Her _ lawyer_, dipshit,” Sirius says, shoves the door open with a shoulder, and punches the gaoler’s lights out.

Remus, in Sirius's right hand, says, “Did you have to lie if you were, like, _ planning _ on knocking him unconscious?”

Sirius flicks the front cover before pocketing the gaoler’s keys.

“Sirius?” a weak voice asks, followed by a sniff. “Is that you?”

“Frell?” Sirius calls out, eyes frenzied like a bloodhound. He starts desperately searching each cell until he finds her in one near the back, sprawled in a patch of sun on the ground, shivering. “Oh my God.” He fumbles hurriedly for the keys, almost breaks the lock because he doesn’t know what to do, seeing her like this.

He drops Remus on the ground, who forgives him for it, barrels into the cell and throws his arms around Lily, who sniffles into his shoulder, as he says, “It’s OK, Frell, it’s OK, we’ve got you, you’re OK.”

He presses a kiss to her hair before resting his chin on her head, then drags her to her feet, rubbing her arm to get her warm. “You right?”

“I’m fine.” Lily holds Sirius’s cheek with a hand, eyes watery. “I’m fine, I’m OK.” She catches sight of Remus on the ground, dives for him, brushing the dust off his sides, saying, “Oh my goodness, Remus, I’m so sorry, I can’t believe I left you in there, I’m so, so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Remus says. “Lily, are you sure you’re alright?”

She nods, slightly, not really answering the question. “Remus, I need you to show me where Tom is,” she says, opening him.

Sirius looks over her shoulder.

They watch Tom in a chamber that Lily guesses is off the ballroom, holding an exquisite gold crown, encrusted with heavy jewels, so big they could be eggs.

She’s thinking about how it’ll look on James’s head when she realises that Tom’s swapping it with another crown already sitting on a marble plinth.

“How much d’you want to bet that he’s poisoned it?” Sirius asks.

Lily, snapping Remus shut, says, “I don’t think we need to bet.”

* * *

He’s not really sure what he’s doing here, this whole business of becoming King is suddenly pointless to him. He knows she’s not in the crowd but that doesn’t stop him looking for her. He knows his Uncle threw her in gaol because she tried to stab him.

He’d let himself sit on the floor for a while after that had happened because he couldn’t wrap his head around it. Do girls stab boys they like? It seems like something she would do.

Instead, he lumbers down the stairs, cloak heavy on his shoulders, feeling out of it, like he’s not really there at all. He’s back in the Hall of Mirrors before all this happened, before his Dad died, before he looked behind him and saw the knife Lily dropped.

There are so many people there, all happy to see him, and he wants to ask why. _ What’s so great about this? _ he wants to know. _ What’s so great about me? _

He walks out, manages to smile, passed from hand to hand like a baby or a church collection box, everyone wants to give him something. This is happening in some faraway part of his mind, like he’s watching it happening to him rather than experiencing it.

Tom ushers him into the private chamber off the Hall to be crowned, and he almost collapses at his Uncle’s feet, down on one knee. Funny, he thinks, how he did this less than ten hours ago, knelt at Lily’s feet and asked her if she wanted to stick around forever because he thought that’d be pretty neat at the time. She tried to stab him after that, something he still doesn’t really understand. He thought she’d liked him back.

It’s just a few of them in the room, him, Tom, some guards. A Bishop who says some words he doesn’t understand, and some he does, about being a valiant ruler, good and just and true. He feels like he has no hope of being that. He doesn’t know what it means to be good anymore. She was his idea of good before she tried to kill him.

* * *

She rushes down the back stairs. It feels like there’s blood filling up her lungs, like she’s drowning from the inside.

Sirius managed to find ogres and giants in the forest, and they’re at the front doors to the large ballroom with Tonks, disarming the guards and clearing out the citizens.

Apparently Mary is here, too, according to the boys. When she heard that she had to stop and hold her cheeks because she couldn’t cry any more, even though the thought of Mary being here after everything broke her a little bit.

She feels Sirius at her shoulder, holding Remus with one hand, the other hovering at her waist in case she trips. She feels so lucky, like this. She really can’t do much better than them, she thinks, except for James to know the truth. To know that she’d rather end herself than end him. It might not matter, anyway, he saw her. He saw the knife.

She runs, now, around and down the spiral staircase that, according to Remus, will lead them right to the private chamber where the official coronation is taking place.

They pause before they reach the bottom, peering down, holding their breath. The ceremony’s taking place, she can tell because no-one speaks. A Bishop, or someone important, is holding a crown over James’s head.

The crown. The poisoned crown.

A part of her could handle the thought that she might be the one to kill James because at least she could try to stop it, or could die, good and proper, for doing it. The thought of him dying at all, really, is too much for her to handle, but at least if she was the one trying to do it, he would hate her instead of someone else. She’d cop so much brunt for him. If it meant that everyone would get to see him how she sees him.

But it doesn’t matter, now, because the Bishop holds the crown over James’s head and he bows to it, resigned, eyes closed, looking more like a Saint than a King.

She thinks about him knocking her out of the way of a moving carriage despite knowing her for less than an hour. The rolling wheels, his hipbones jutting into hers, the way he’d laughed into her hair, called her crazy. She is crazy, she knows that now. She’s utterly, utterly crazy because of him. For him. About him.

Because of him, she does this.

Without thinking she barrels down the stairs, even as Sirius calls, “_Lily_!”, stupid and reckless and brave like when she ran out in front of him in the forest while he was being punched stupid. She can’t stand seeing bad things happening to good people, even if they think they want it, or deserve it.

She sprints out onto the altar and throws herself at James, knocking herself into him and out of harm’s way.

_ Oh_, she thinks, as James’s eyes open, looking at her as she lays on top of him.

For some reason, like just can’t help himself, he smiles.

“Hi,” she says, struck dumb.

“God, it’s always you, Frell, isn’t it?” he asks, shaking his head.

“Get up,” she says, catching sight of Tom, hand on a staff, snake curled up in the corner like a coiled spring. Tom is staring at her like she’s truly awful, ruining everything all the time.

Of course she’s awful, she thinks, as she and James struggle to their feet, her back to his chest, holding his hands behind her. She’d save him from anything.

“I forgive you, by the way,” James whispers into her hair. “Just so you know.”

“Shut up,” she tells him, smiling despite herself, almost enough to cry, because she hasn’t even said anything and he’s ready to forgive her.

“Seize them,” Tom says, calmly, pointing the finger.

It goes a bit mental after that, chaotic. Two guards on the door charge at them, but Sirius gets there before they can, using Remus to hit them both in the face.

“Ow,” she hears him mutter, faintly.

“You’re welcome, mate,” Sirius says, turning and winking at James.

James shrugs and laughs at once, outright, like Sirius is worse and more impossible and ten times better than he is. He unsheathes his sword, the one he’d been wearing the whole time, she hadn’t even noticed, and picks up the ceremonial sword on the altar, giving it to Lily.

More guards rush in through the door. Sirius continues to use Remus as a weapon to hit people with.

The doors to the main ballroom open, and Tonks streams in with a group of elves that Lily suspects are from Pim. She can’t believe Sirius went that far for her. She sees Mary with them—_oh God, Mary_—and it feels like someone’s cracked the shell of her ribs, through the meat of her lungs and heart.

She knocks a guard out with the butt of her sword, keeps watching to see Hagrid duck through the doorway, several other giants with him.

“You did all this?” she calls to Sirius, gesturing to the door.

“Well, yeah,” he says, like she’s stupid, “you asked me to.”

She wants to cry.

She doesn’t see the sword as it swings towards her head, but out of nowhere James parries it.

Staggering towards them, Sirius says, “I can’t believe he’s saving you after you _ literally _ tried to kill him.” He hits another soldier. Remus groans.

“He’s got a point,” James tells her, kicking a guard in the face.

“_I didn’t,_” Lily swears, whirling and clubbing down another of Tom’s soldiers, “_try to kill you!_”

“You kind of did,” James points out, shrugging.

“Alright, I mean, maybe I did, but—it wasn’t me.” It’s so familiar to her, loping back into the old habit of not being able to tell him, but she can, she realises. She can do anything she wants now.

“OK, it was me,” she says, “but it wasn’t my fault.”

“Jesus Christ, Frell, accept some responsibility, for _ once _ in your _ life_,” Sirius complains, taking down a soldier.

“Ignore him,” Lily protests.

“I always do,” James tells her, and Sirius swings Remus into him.

“Oops,” he says innocently, “wrong person.”

“Ow,” James says, rubbing his ribs, before swinging his sword at another guard. “Anyway, it’s OK, Frell, I forgive you.” He chucks Sirius his sword and grabs the Bishop’s staff instead, hitting a soldier between the eyes.

“No, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t _ have _ to forgive me, I need to tell you what happened,” she tells him, eyes wide and sad.

Jumping up and swinging from a chandelier with one hand, sword in the other, with Remus in the crook of his elbow, Sirius launches himself into the crowd, screaming, “I’m wild!”

“Maybe later?” James suggests.

* * *

Tonks finds herself ducking and running, using what low-level magic she can to disperse and disarm the guards in her way. She’s trying to get close to Sirius, who’s still holding Remus. She hasn’t seen Remus in what feels like months. She hasn’t seen Sirius in years.

He crashes through the throng of soldiers, Remus in one hand and a sword in the other, screaming like Rambo or Tarzan. He eventually gets caught between two guards, who try to force him to his knees.

“Nymphadora!” Remus yells, caught.

She rubs her hands together. She’s been practicing every night since he left. If Lily can leave everything she’s ever known, try to sort herself out, Tonks can do this.

She says a little prayer, then clicks her fingers.

* * *

“You need to know,” Lily tells James, dodging another blow.

“Frell,” he says, wiping his sweaty hair out of his face. _ Oh no, _ she thinks, _ oh, dear. _ “I really don’t.”

“Just let me explain,” she tells him.

He shrugs. “Fine,” he says, then, “_Duck_.”

She does, and he whirls the staff around, one-handed, knocking out four guards at once.

“Better make it quick, then,” he tells her.

* * *

Remus stands, almost collapsing into Sirius, knees buckling like a colt. The guards, everyone around them, stumbles back a bit, not knowing what they’ve just seen.

Sirius makes a face at Remus. “Why the fuck didn’t you mention that you were _ tall_?”

“Didn’t think it was relevant,” Remus says, looking _ down _ at Sirius, picking up a chair and smashing it over a guard’s head.

“Oh my God,” Tonks says, pushing and running through the crowd, leaping onto the tips of her toes, grabbing Remus by the collar and pressing a dangerous kiss right to his lips. He fists his hand into her hair. She can feel him smiling.

“Hi,” she laughs, breathless, right into his face.

He pinches her nose, grinning, and says, “Took you long enough.”

* * *

“Tell me,” James says, whirling her into the stairway. “Short version, if you can.”

“You know how most kids in villages get given gifts from fairies?” she starts.

“Yeah,” he says, glancing around, anxiously. He wants to be back out there, she knows.

“I got gifted obedience.”

His head snaps back to look at her, then, eyes wide. “You’re not serious?”

She shrugs, painfully, conceding.

He nods. “OK,” he says, scratching a hand over the back of his neck. A guard goes flying past them, having been thrown by Sirius. “OK, so…”

“So I left home to try and find the fairy who gave it to me, to get her to take it back. I met Sirius on the way.”

“Who else knows?” he asks.

“My Mum knew, and Tonks,” she says, pointing to where she’s sitting on Remus’s—_ Remus’s _—shoulders, swinging a morning star and bellowing at the top of her lungs. “Jesus,” Lily whispers. “Oh, and, um—my stepsister found out.”

“Petunia?” he asks. “God, OK.”

“That’s why I left. She forced me to break things off with my best mate.”

“OK, alright,” he says, nodding.

“And, then, well…” she trails off, tugging at her hair. “And your Uncle found out, I don’t know how.”

Things seem to go very quiet around them. James isn’t saying much.

“Anyway,” she says, “he found out and he ordered me to kill you and…” She can’t look at him while she says all this. “The only way I could think to stop it was to keep myself away from you even though that I, well, you know…”

She shifts her feet like it’s painful to say, her nose twitches and she bites her lip. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” She shrugs, like, _ what can you do_.

She glances up. He’s starting at her, astounded.

“Oh, and—the—the crown that he’s trying to put on your head,” she says, grabbing his arm. “It’s a trick. It’s poisoned.”

“Fuck, alright,” he says, stepping back, tangling a hand in his hair. “My Uncle’s trying to kill me.” He laughs at the absurdity of it. “Fair play.”

He moves, about to go back to the fighting, of course he wants to be out there, helping, doing something real instead of standing there and having to hear what she’s about to say.

“No, wait—” she says, grabbing his wrist. “There’s—there’s one more thing.”

He turns back to her, waiting. It’s worse than killing him, what she’s about to say.

They stand there. She can hear people yelling and fighting all around them. It’s like she has tunnel vision. All she can see is him. He has to know, she has to tell him.

“He killed your Father,” she says.

It’s four words, separately they aren’t so bad. Together they sound like a joke, they don’t sound real.

“Sorry?” he says, looking at her and she can tell it hurts him, to not understand.

All she can do is look at him. She doesn’t notice Tom lumber over to them, leaning on his staff because something’s happened to his leg.

“That’s not true,” James says to her, simply, so convinced of it and so convincing that she almost believes him, too. He turns away from her, about to start out of the alcove, go up the stairs, anywhere. But there’s nowhere for him to go where this won’t be true. His Uncle killed his Father. It’ll be true everywhere. She wishes she could take it back. She wishes it hadn’t happened and he didn’t have to know.

“Of course it’s not true,” Tom says, pausing on the altar, serene. “Who are you going to believe? The man who raised you? Or this…” He gestures vaguely to Lily. “Lying little witch?”

Tom really doesn’t know his nephew at all, Lily thinks. James’s head snaps up, all that lethal calm focusing, like a kettle boiling. He seems to know all kinds of things, is able to discount everything about his Uncle just because he said something bad about Lily. Like it’s like the one thing he can’t forgive.

James walks right up to Tom, stony-faced, grabbing fistfuls of his collar. “Did you do it?” he asks, quietly. “Did you kill Dad?”

“James, of course not,” Tom says, like this is boring him, stepping out of his nephew’s grip. “Did _ she _ tell you that?” he asks, looking at Lily in that way that she hates, the searching, bearing-down gaze. “James, don’t be ridiculous. You’d really side with her over your own Uncle?”

People are starting to quiet around them, abandoning the fight. A few of the giants use that opportunity to start shoving the remaining guards back into the main ballroom, Tonks, Mary and the elves barring the doors.

Lily doesn’t even see the snake, soundless, until it’s right there, around their feet like seaweed. The hiss precedes the bite, the snake about to sink its teeth into James’s calf, but suddenly Sirius is there, stepping down on its head.

“Guess that answers that question,” he says.

“_You_—” Tom hisses at Lily, and suddenly she’s seeing anger from him when recently it’s been nothing but liminal annoyance and a kind of deadly quiet. “You _ stupid _ little girl.” He lowers his voice, almost imperceptible. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance.”

James goes livid and rigid at the same time. He drags Lily behind his back.

“Why’d you do it?” he asks, conversationally.

“Why?” Tom says, quietly. He smiles, then, the same one he gave Lily when he told her to kill James. “He was _ in my way_.”

Something clinks, then, loud in the relative quiet of the abandoned chamber, echoing off the marble altar and domed ceiling.

They turn to see Sirius picking up the poisoned crown.

“Sorry, did you want this?” he asks Tom.

And then he throws the crown.

Lily thinks it says a lot, the way people behave, for it. It’s a poisoned crown but it’s still a crown.

Sirius threw it. Lily steps away. James reaches out an arm and says, “Wait!”

But Tom dives for it. It brushes his forearm, slipping over his hands as he catches it. He straightens, flicking a curl out of his face, slick like jet oil. Lily sees his face, irked, even as he holds the crown reverently.

“Your Father wasn’t fit to wear this,” Tom says, simply, like it’s a matter of fact. James shoves angrily towards him, Lily holding his arm to pull him back. “Neither are you.”

James stops, abruptly, watching Tom’s hands. He pales.

“This crown is _ mine_,” Tom says, a hint of the fevered, the righteous, worshipper, cult-leader. “This _ kingdom_—”

He chokes, pausing. Looking down at his palms. He should’ve let it drop, roll away down the steps. Whatever he used, it’s on his hands. Death on his hands. Blood on his hands.

Tom collapses, still holding the crown, unwilling to let it go.

* * *

They call for a doctor, immediately, but it’s not enough to save him.

The group of them stumble back out into the main ballroom after Tom is whisked away. The guards, all around them, unsure of what to do, James calling them off.

Even is a pseudo-grief he’s in control, but his eyes are glazed, like he’s moving out of habit. The doors are open, most people have been ushered outside, but Lily can see a few of their faces. Petunia’s, her stepmother’s, her Father’s.

He’s not a King but a King. It doesn’t matter, she thinks, he moves with purpose. They’ll do all this later. They can do this later.

The last of the citizens disappear through the large doors, which close.

Once they’re alone, James sinks onto the marble steps of the ballroom’s altar, his head in his hands. Lily sits down next to him.

Throughout the castle, bells are tolling because someone’s dead, and people seem to think it’s because James has been crowned even though nothing official has happened yet. They don’t know that the coronation’s been called off, but that doesn’t stop the shouts that reach them behind closed doors.

“_Long live the King! Long live the King!” _

* * *

News spreads quickly, why the coronation was called off, that Tom tried to poison his nephew, that he killed the old King, that he wanted to seize power for himself. 

The majority of citizens back them once they find out what Tom did, what he tried to do, saying that they always thought something was off about him.

Some people don’t believe them, of course, try to twist the words, but most people don’t.

People, Lily thinks, can be good.

* * *

He is crowned, officially, a few weeks later.

During the ceremony, Sirius mentions, casually, that he’s poisoned this crown, too, and James flips him off discreetly from where he’s kneeling on the altar.

Lily’s been looking at him ever since he stepped out from the stairwell alcove, he looks that good. Brocaded jacket, the leather trousers she doesn’t stop joking about. He looks good, she’s sure he knows that.

Her family and not-family and other-family is there; her Father; stepmother and Petunia; Sirius, Remus, Tonks and Mary. She’d seen her Father earlier, simply nodded at her stepmother and Petunia. She doesn’t intend to see them again, after this, really. It doesn’t bother her.

The Bishop says the words and crowns James, who stands and vows to be all the things he already is, in Lily’s opinion; valiant and strong, kind and true.

After the ceremony, when people have begun to file out of the room, their little group gathers around James, like he’s just given a particularly good class presentation or won a football game.

Sirius procures a bottle of champagne and they sit around on the steps, but only after James has passed a law officially returning the giants’ farms back to their rightful owners, releasing them from slave labour and elves from a lifetime of work in the entertainment industry, freeing ogres from their banishment to the forest.

She smiles as she leans against the wall, thinking about how the last few times she’s been in this room she has been not-free and free. There’s a part of her that’s like a phantom limb, when someone tells her to do something instead of asking she almost feels like she has to, but Sirius just jokes that that’s because she’s such a suck-up. Remus hits him every time does, finally able to do so.

Behind her, she watches Sirius lope a leg over James’s new throne, and James go up to him and say, “You can’t sit there,” and Sirius getting off and falling at James’s feet, begging for forgiveness.

“_Please_, your _ Majesty_, _ forgive me_, your _ Majesty_.” He’s only amped it up now that James is officially a King and not a Prince.

“Please, shut up,” Remus says to Sirius, sitting with Tonks on his lap.

“You shut up, Yellow Pages,” Sirius tells him.

James comes over to stand beside her, watching the others.

“You saved my life, you know that?” he tells her, casually knocking his shoulder into hers. He could almost not mean it, she thinks, as she smiles to herself.

“Couldn’t let you have the upper hand,” she says.

“Yeah, but haven’t I saved your life, like, what? Twice? Three times?”

_ More than that_, she thinks. He probably saved her life before they even met, before she was even born.

“Am I in your debt, then?” she asks dangerously, crossing one leg over the other, loping her head back against the wall, looking at him.

He grins down at her. “Make it up to me,” he says.

“Yeah?” she asks, lifting her chin. “How?”

He shrugs. “Marry me?” he asks. Always a question. Even though she’s not cursed anymore he always poses everything as a question. Like she’d ever say no to him, anyway.

“Oh, that,” she says, as if she’d forgotten, which she definitely hasn’t. She can feel herself remembering things he says to her even as it happens. She smiles at him, like nothing bad has ever happened to her, like she was never even cursed, like her Mum has come back from the dead and said, “He’s a nice boy, you should marry him.”

“That,” she says, nodding. “That, I’ll do.”


End file.
